Characters / Dota 2 Universal A To M

This is part of the character sheet for Dota 2. This page contains the Universal heroes that begin with the letter A to M. Please note that this is sorted not by their real names, but their in-game names, which will be bolded in the folder.

Strength | A -- M | N -- Z Agility | A -- M | N -- Z Intelligence | A -- M | N -- Z Universal | A — M | N -- Z Personas | Artifact heroes Dota Underlords Neutrals | Others

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Abaddon, the Lord of Avernus

"The fog of war is no match for the mist of fate."

Voiced by: TJ Ramini

The House Avernus wields strange powers which are granted to the family by the mysterious black mists of the Font of Avernus. When the newborn Abbadon underwent the house's traditional baptism in the Font's vapors, his eyes flared with a strange understanding of its powers. As the young Abaddon engaged in the traditional training to become a defender of his home and the Font, he grew to prefer wielding the powers of the Font in combat over using traditional weaponry. He spent long periods meditating in the mists and drank deeper and deeper from the Font's vapors, eventually transforming his body into that of a creature infused with the mist. Soon, Abaddon was granted unprecedented control over the Font's power, making him the most powerful lord in his clan's history.

Abaddon is a tanky hero that can be built as a support or core. The Mist Coil heals ally or damages a target, using Abaddon's own HP. He can protect himself or an ally with his signature Aphotic Shield that can explode after absorbing damage, creating a great synergy with Mist Coil as he can use its damage to self explode the shield. The shield also cleanses his allies, removing almost every single negative status effect in the game. But Abaddon is no slouch himself, as his sword marks its victims with the Curse of Avernus, slowing their movement, and if struck enough times, the curse will silence the target and grant attack speed to its attackers. His ultimate Borrowed Time inverts all damage taken, turning it into healing and making him a walking tank that will continue to support his allies or wrecking the enemies. This ability will activate on its own should Abaddon's health pool become too low, as long as it's not currently on cooldown. With Aghanim's Scepter, Borrowed Time also redirect the damage received by his allies into Abaddon, increasing their survivability and turning their pain into healing for himself.

In Artifact, Abaddon is a green hero. His Active Ability is Borrowed Time, which fully heals him and grants Damage Immunity for one round. His signature card, Aphotic Shield, grants a unit 2 Armor, 2 Retaliate, and purges enemy effects.

In Dota Underlords, Abaddon is a tier 3 hero. His ability, Aphotic Shield, creates a shield around an ally that absorbs a certain amount of damage, and deals damage to enemies up to 2 cells away when it expires or is destroyed.

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• Achilles' Heel:
  • Borrowed Time can be penetrated with Axe's ultimate so long as Abaddon's HP meets the threshold for Culling Blade's instant kill - or skipped by a single attack that gets him from over 400 HP to zero so long as he doesn't manually trigger it.
  • If the enemy is paying attention, they can simply stop attacking Abaddon while Borrowed Time is in effect, turning it into a minor "invincible for 5 seconds" ability, then blow him away when it stops. It also doesn't help that he remains fully vulnerable to slows, stuns, and disables, making it harder for him to escape.
  • Ancient Apparition's Ice Blast is perhaps the most powerful counter to Abaddon, as it will prevent any healing done by the ability (though he also won't take any damage either since it would otherwise heal him). If Abaddon somehow manages to slip below the 12% HP threshold though (which can only realistically happen if the blast itself brings him from over 400 HP to below the threshold, as Abaddon is unlikely to farm himself up to above 3333 HP), he will shatter even if Borrowed Time is active.
  • Break (such as from Viper Strike or Silver Edge) prevents Borrowed Time from auto-activating. This means if Abaddon is chain-controlled while under its effect, he will die without his ultimate activating.
• Adaptation Name Change: Abaddon's third skill Curse of Avernus was originally named Frostmourne in the original DotA, something that obviously cannot be ported as it is the name of a sword in Warcraft. His first skill was also renamed Mist Coil from Death Coil, which was a skill of the Warcraft III Death Knight hero.
• Anti-Escape Mechanism: Curse of Avernus allows Abaddon to keep pace with an enemy and prevent them from escaping, since he simply has to hit them with his sword only once to slow them down enough to give himself a permanent speed advantage to land subsequent hits. And once his allies catch up, they can also start taking advantage of the movement and attack speed boost to gang up on the target.
• Anti-Magic: After four basic attacks with Curse of Avernus active, the target is silenced and unable to cast spells for the debuff's duration.
• Arch-Enemy: Abaddon's helmet is apparently made from the head of a Zealot Scarab. This is corroborated by a rival line for whenever he kills Nyx Assassin, and a corresponding rival line from Nyx if he kills Abaddon.
• Badass Cape: The intimidating and powerful lord of Avernus wears a dark purple cape with his armor.
• Barrier Warrior: Abaddon's second ability, Aphotic Shield, prevents damage to himself or an ally for a short duration, or until it absorbs a certain amount of damage, at which point it bursts, sending that damage back at the attackers.
• The Berserker: One way to play Abaddon, which works surprisingly well in lower levels is to suicidally charge into the enemy with Mask of Madness and possibly Armlet of Mordiggian on, relying on how Aphotic Shield and Borrowed Time makes you very difficult to kill and Curse of Avernus makes it impossible to run away from you. In pub games where everyone has no idea of what a TP scroll is supposed to be and no one coordinates with each other, Abaddon can easily get fed and carry the match - something that is totally unviable in professional games, where the highest farm priority he's allocated is 3 and he usually loses if played as a right-clicker.
• Black Knight: Abaddon is a grim and imposing mounted, armored warrior dressed in black, surrounded by dark mist on a spectral horse.
• Blue Blood: He's the lord of House Avernus, a noble family whose lords lead armies to defend their ancestral lands. Notable in some of his quotes.
• Breath Weapon: Lords of the House Avernus breathe in the misty vapors that emanate from the Font of Avernus in order to gain their supernatural powers. Abaddon himself is especially infused with it. The lore of Mist Coil describes it such:
  A mysterious vapor from the Font of Avernus now infuses the breath of Abaddon, who releases it at will.
• Carry a Big Stick: The "Mace of the Chosen" Immortal weapon from the TI3 Compendium. It changes the particle effects on his Aphotic Shield.
• Cast from Hit Points: His first ability, Mist Coil, can either heal allies or damage enemies, at the cost of a fraction of that amount to Abaddon's HP. Furthermore, since it deals Pure damage to Abaddon, it is possible to heal yourself with it while Borrowed Time is active, or add to Aphotic Shield's damage counter.
• Combat Medic: Mist Coil can be used to heal allies as well as damaging enemies.
• Cool Helmet: He wears a face-obscuring black horned helmet by default, and his cosmetics introduce several helmets with equally awesome designs.
• Cool Horse: Rides a ghastly-looking spectral horse, although his concept art portrays him riding a griffon.
• Cool Sword: His default weapon is a mist-infused blade he strikes enemies with from atop his horse. Several of his cosmetics are equally cool-looking blades.
• Creepy Good: He looks pretty terrifying, but is a fairly neutral figure, and leans heavily into a sacrificial and supportive nature as a hero.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Abaddon certainly sports the ominous Black Knight feel and dark powers, but by the end of it, he's more of a neutral entity more concerned on the welfare of his House Avernus rather than making his enemies suffer or flaunting his superiority, and has quite a few compliment voice lines if meeting with other heroes. His gameplay is also by nature self-sacrificing, involving Taking the Bullet, healing others with a Cast from Hit Points ability, leading others into a chase against an enemy, and buying support items such as wards. This makes a stark contrast when you consider that his old model was the Warcraft Death Knight.
• Empathic Healer: Can heal allies at the cost of his own HP with Mist Coil. This also has obvious applications with Borrowed Time, causing it to heal Abaddon instead, and indeed is capitalized on by his Aghanim's Scepter upgrade causing him to passively fire Mist Coil at nearby allies when they take enough damage while Borrowed Time is active.
• Empathic Weapon: The mist from the Font of Avernus is implied to be sentient, though its motives are unclear. Abaddon states that it chose him to serve its purposes, rather than the other way around.
• Energy Absorption:
  • Aphiotic Shield absorbs any and all damage thrown at it for the duration, or until the shields breaks and deals damage to enemies nearby its target.
  • Abaddon's ultimate, Borrowed Time, turns any damage that Abaddon takes during its duration into healing instead. If timed properly and used against the proper enemies, it can bring Abaddon from near-death up to full health in a matter of seconds.
• Expy: His design is similar to that of the Nazgûl from The Lord of the Rings. He's also been compared to the Lich King, which is ironic considering pre-Lich King Arthas was his character model and voice in Warcraft III DotA.
• The Faceless: By default, Abaddon's face is completely obscured by his helmet; some cosmetics obscure it with a hood. By default, the only visible feature are his glowing white eyes.
• Field Power Effect: If Abaddon purchases an Aghanim's Scepter, triggering Borrowed Time will redirect 50% of all damage done to all allies nearby, which both guarantees that he will return to full health at the end of the ultimate, and drastically increases the survivability of all his allies for the duration of the ultimate.
• Foil: To Mirana. Abaddon is loyal to the House of Avernus, while Mirana abandoned the Solar throne for another. Abaddon emphasizes the duty of being a Noble, while Mirana emphasizes the privilege. Abaddon's gameplay is archetypically courageous, protecting his allies while diving fearlessly into the fray, while Mirana acts at times like a Egomaniac Hunter, pot-shotting enemies from a safe distance behind her allies before jumping forward to claim the kill. Abaddon draws his powers from the hidden, dark mists of the Font of Avernus, while Mirana draws powers from the moon goddess, Selemene. Abaddon is a strong counter to Mirana, due to his Aphotic Shield, a spammable hard dispel, which can easily remove the stun from Sacred Arrow and making Mirana much less effective.
• Four Is Death: Upon hitting a target four times with attacks, Curse of Avernus will silence the target for four seconds.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: His eyes glow pure white, and for his enemies, Abaddon's certainly a force to be reckoned with.
• Hellish Horse: Most of Abaddon's mounts are thoroughly creepy-looking horses, all conjured from the mist itself.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Abaddon's weapon disappears when not in use, and reappears in his hand when enemies approach. This effect appears to be a visual bug, as it was eventually patched out.
• Implacable Man:
  • Aphotic Shield gives him huge amounts of durability and let him easily absorb damage, meaning that he can tower dive or chase early on in the game while taking minimal damage. It also removes debuffs from the target upon casting, including stuns (the only other such abilities are Tidehunter's Kraken Shell, Slark's Dark Pact, Legion Commander's Press the Attack and Abaddon's own Borrowed Time).
  • Borrowed Time itself is also this. Upon triggering, it will remove all debuffs from Abaddon, much like Aphotic Shield above, and disjoint most projectiles flying at him. Only two heroes can put him down while it's own, and even then it's a hard task.
• In the Hood: Abaddon switches his helmet for a hood if wearing the Arsenal of the Demonic Vessel cosmetic set.
• Jack of All Stats: Abaddon's kit is simultaneously good at supporting allies and keeping them alive, chasing and and blasting down enemies, and makkng himself very hard to bring down. As such, he can and has been played in every role from a position 3 or 4 support by prioritizing Mist Coil and Aphotic Shield to a position 1 carry (by building Manta Style to near-instantly proc Curse of Avernus and Radiance for flash-farming and damage).
• The Juggernaut: Borrowed Time, on top of removing most debuffs and stuns like Aphotic Shield, turns all incoming damage into health, meaning that any kind of damage will simply heal him right back up to full health. If Abaddon decides to focus on durability with items like Heart of Tarrasque and Aghanim's Scepter, then bringing him down in a teamfight becomes a chore in and of itself (on top of effectively wasting the enemy's damage nukes and time in trying to kill him, leaving his teammates comparatively unscathed and able to fight the enemy). And if he has Octarine Core on top of that, the enemy will often bring him low only to find Borrowed Time off cooldown again due to the cooldown reduction...
• Magic Knight: Though a support and reliant on his spells, Abaddon is no slouch in direct combat either due to his relatively high base damage and Curse of Avernus. Plus, he's a literal example.
• Meaningful Name: Abaddon's name means "The Destroyer" in Hebrew, and is the name of an angel thought to come from the Abyss. Avernus is the name of the crater that is the entrance to hell in The Aeneid.
• Modest Royalty: Despite being nobility, his armor is comparatively low-key and covered by robes. He only really flaunts his Blue Blood when killing enemies.
• Mounted Combat: He rides into battle on spectral-looking mist horses.
• Mysterious Mist: He got his powers from the Font of Avernus, from which mysterious supernatural mist emanates. While all scions of the House of Avernus breathe it to gain power, Abaddon absorbed enough of its vapors to meld it with his soul, and has powers that outmatch any other Avernal lord.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "Abaddon" is the name of the angel of destruction.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: Abaddon's weapons are universally around as tall as Abaddon himself, yet he has no problem wielding them with one hand while holding the reins of his steed with the other.
• Purple Is the New Black: With the Arsenal of the Demonic Vessel cosmetic set, the colour of Mist Coil and Aphotic Shield is changed from black to purple.
• Raising the Steaks: The Steed of the Brinebred Cavalier is strongly implied to be undead, with only bones and traces of skin left.
• The Red Mage: Abaddon's abilities can all be used to harm his enemies or to aid his allies, often both at once.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: He's nobility rather than royalty, but every member of the House of Avernus is expected to lead their armies against whoever attacks.
• The Sacred Darkness: The Font of Avernus manifests itself as thick, black mist, and turned Abaddon into "a creature of the black mist," giving him a dark, ghastly appearance. However, the powers given to him by the Font can be used to heal and protect his allies as well as harm his foes.
• Scary Teeth: Though difficult to notice under normal conditions, certain lighting◊ shows that Abaddon has a large mouth with nasty, jagged teeth, possibly a result of being in the mist too long.
• Skill Gate Characters: Abaddon works surprisingly well as a carry in pub games: he can dive towers fairly well with Borrowed Time and Aphotic Shield and get easily fed, Curse of Avernus makes him really hard to run away from, and he's quite tanky as well, especially when everyone has no idea that Borrowed Time will turn all damage that he takes into healing, causing them to continue to focus him even when Borrowed Time is active and heal him to full in a second, essentially tripling his effective HP. In high-level games, though, that rarely works well: he is a melee carry with little mobility making him vulnerable to kiting, Curse of Avernus isn't that good of a steroids (it only gives a flat 40 attack speed bonus, so a Lifestealer with equal farm will out-DPS an Abaddon with ease) and works for everyone on his team, and he needs to spam Mist Coil and Aphotic Shield to be effective in a fight but his cast time is slow, leading to consistent interrupts to damage-dealing which is NOT something a carry wants. Because of this, whenever played in professional games, Abaddon is most often played as an offlaner or support, buying utility and aura items, healing and protecting his cores with Mist Coil and Aphotic Shield, providing them with an additional damage steroids and disrupting the enemy with Curse of Avernus and discouraging the other team from focusing him with Borrowed Time.
• Softspoken Sadist: Compared to most other heroes, many who verge on Large Hams, Abaddon is surprisingly reserved in both tone and voice. He rarely yells, and his voice is soft and wispy, and while he's fairly restrained, he ocassionally expresses some sense of pleasure and superiority in laying his foes low.
• Status-Buff Dispel: When cast, Aphotic Shield removes most negative buffs from the target, while Borrowed Time does the same for Abaddon's himself. Notably, this includes a number of debuffs that cannot otherwise be dispelled, such as most stuns.
• Stone Wall: Abaddon can be a beast to take down thanks to his damage-absorbing shield and automatically-triggered invulnerability that also turns any damage he takes into health. Being able to live through practically any burst even from a blink initiation without the need of an Aeon Disk is something only Abaddon (and Wraith King) can boast. The trade-off is that his damage steroids Curse of Avernus doesn't scale very well with farm compared to a real carry, though this is mitigated by Abaddon's status as a Universal hero.
• Touched by Vorlons: Received his abilities by breathing in the vapors from the Font Avernus. While other Avernal lords did the same, Abaddon himself bonded his soul with the mist and transformed into a creature of the black mist.
• Vampiric Draining: His passive, Curse of Avernus, slows the movement and attack speed of any enemy he attacks, while simultaneously buffing that of any allies who right-click the target after it is silenced.
• Was Once a Man: Whatever race he belonged to before, he certainly isn't one of them any longer due to the Font's influence.

Atropos, the Bane Elemental

"Shut your eyes, and dream of me."

Voiced by: David Scully

Atropos was born from the nightmares of the goddess Nyctasha. The terrifying visions she saw in her sleep were powerful enough to burst our of her body and obtain a life of their own, and so the Bane Elemental came to be. Crafting a body from the goddess' inky blood, Atropos became fear incarnate, knowing the greatest fears of gods and mortals alike and plaguing them with nightmares.

Atropos the Bane Elemental, otherwise known as Bane, is an incredibly powerful disabler generally played as a support, with a repertoire of debilitating spells allowing him to cripple multiple enemy heroes with ease. Enfeeble inflicts a debuff that both inflicts Pure damage over time and reduces the victim's attack damage and cast range, crippling most opponents. Brain Sap is a pure damage nuke that drains the enemy's health and gives it to Bane, making him a powerful harasser who can trade blows quite well. Nightmare puts the target into a fitful slumber, leaving it completely at the mercy of Bane and his allies. However, the target is briefly made invulnerable, and should anyone other than Bane attack the target, it will be woken up and the Nightmare transferred to the attacker. Not only can this spell be cast on both allies and enemies, but Bane can end the Nightmare at any time, allowing unusual plays through Nightmare manipulation. Finally, Bane boasts one of the most powerful channeled disables in the game with his ultimate ability Fiend's Grip, which holds the victim helplessly in place while draining mana and inflicting heavy damage for the duration of the channel. This spell can disable enemies even through spell immunity, making Bane a truly fearsome opponent.

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• Achilles' Heel: While Bane is a great disabler, all his spells are single targeted^note at least until he gets Aghanim's Shard, which gives Brain Sap an area of effect, making him one of the worst pushers in the game. For the same reason, Lotus Orb makes a unit basically untouchable by Bane as everything he casts will get reflected onto Bane himself, including Fiend's Grip which gets cancelled instantly.
• Alien Blood: He is continually oozing black blood from various parts of his body, although in this case it's not his own.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Bane is Nyctasha's nightmares turned reality.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Fiend's Grip can disable and drain an enemy's mana through debuff immunity. This makes it one of the more powerful disables in the game, since carries often rely on debuff immunity in order to avoid being disabled in a teamfight.
• Black Mage: His entire kit consists of nukes and debuffs designed to screw his enemies up as much as possible.
• Careful with That Axe: When Bane buys a Blink Dagger... he has a low chance to spout this line.
• Combination Attack: Nightmare's purpose in a nutshell. As a disable it's rather situational, only really usable on a target which your team don't intend to focus down^note One of its best direct uses is to counter Legion Commander's Duel. Casting it on LC or her target just makes them trade the spell back & forth until Duel wears off or for that special kind of player who plays Bane as a right-clicker. On the other hand, it's one of the best setup abilities in the game: its long duration gives plenty of time for Bane's teammates to reposition themselves, and if necessary, land a powerful and normally-difficult skillshot (Mirana's Sacred Arrow being most notable) with zero effort.
• Dark Is Evil: Bane is a living nightmare, delighting in inflicting his enemies with their worst fears. He is a sinister shade of purple dripping with black ichor.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Since all of Bane's abilities are single-target and mechanically very different and unique, good Bane gameplay means that you'll have to know when to cast certain disables and when to hold back. However, good Bane players can hard-disable two enemy Heroes in a teamfight, greatly reduce the effectiveness of carries' right-clicks, and generally make life difficult for the enemy.
  • Nightmare is a rather complex spell to use: it can be cast on allies, transfers between targets with right-clicks, and has a 1-second invulnerability window. This means that it can completely screw over your team if used the wrong way. One of the harder tricks to pull off is casting it on an ally to take advantage of its invulnerability period; time it perfectly and you can block a nuke spell, saving your friend's life, but if you're off by just a little bit, you'll probably end up just stunning them for no reason, making things worse.
• Dream Stealer: Brain Sap deals Pure damage to a targeted enemy, and heals Bane for the amount of damage inflicted.
• Eldritch Abomination: This monster that was literally born from the night terrors of a goddess and feeds upon fear is as close as it gets.
• Evil Laugh: Bane loves to laugh as he makes his enemies' nightmares come true.
• Eyeless Face: His lack of eyes make him look even creepier.
• Fixed Damage Attack: Brain Sap deals pure damage to a targeted enemy, and heals Bane for the same amount.
• Foil: To Doom. Doom is a tank/carry who specializes in using Doom to prevent a caster from casting any spells (which for most, basically means they're out of the fight until they can cast again), while Bane is a caster who specializes in using Fiend's Grip to disable the tank or carry, letting their teammates freely beat down on them.
• Forced Sleep: Nightmare and Fiend's Grip put the target to sleep, preventing it from acting.
• For the Evulz: He has no real reason for causing chaos and terror. He's a living nightmare, that's what he does.
• Gender-Blender Name: In Greek Mythology, Atropos was a female name. While it's hard to pin down what gender something like Bane would be, he goes by masculine pronouns.
• I Know What You Fear: And able to turn it against you with Nightmare and Fiend's Grip.
• Jack of All Stats: Unusually, Bane has completely even stats and stat growth, and is classified as a Universal hero so he gets attack damage bonuses from every Attribute.
• Madness Mantra: When casting Fiend's Grip.
  Bane: "bane of your existence bane of your existence bane of your existence bane of your existence..."
• Mercy Invincibility: Nightmare gives its target invincibility for the first second of the spell, allowing it to be used to dodge abilities. Multiple times.
• Mind Rape: All of Bane's abilities rely on manipulation of the fear he creates in enemies.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: He has an extra set of arms extending from his back. The Slumbering Terror Immortal item gives him an additional pair.
• Nightmare Face: An Eyeless Face and a lipless mouth full of sharp teeth certainly don't help him look less horrifying.
• Nightmare Weaver: Enemies put to sleep by Nightmare and Fiend's Grip do not rest easy, as they are tormented by horrific nightmares that deal damage over time.
• Obvious Rule Patch: One of the talents that Bane had during the 7.07 rework was that Enfeeble could steal damage at level 10. This actually cause a brief influx of solo mid Banes where he maxed Enfeeble as his second skill, skilled the talent at level ten, then used Nightmare to quickly DPS them using the Enfeeble talent buff. This was quickly rectified in 7.07b when the talent was moved up to level 15, which killed any viability of core Banes in competitive Dota and relegated him into a pub-only build but even there, it isn't exactly commonplace.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: Has a distinctively centaur-like body.
• Power Floats: He floats a short distance over the ground.
• Power Limiter: Enfeeble reduces the target's attack damage by a certain amount for 20 seconds, and can't be dispelled by anything. Used in-lane it can starve your lane opponents of last hits (and experience since you can then easily deny creeps), used in teamfights it can drastically reduce the damage output of the enemy carries.
• Purple Is the New Black: You'd expect the embodiment of nightmares to be colored black, rather than a vivid purple. He does have black blood dripping from his body, however.
• Required Secondary Powers: Bane can end Nightmare whenever he wants to prevent the ability from screwing up his teammates too much. He can also do this while he himself is affected by Nightmare, and can attack Nightmared enemies without waking them up or transferring it to himself.
• Self-Duplication: With Aghanim's Scepter, Fiend's Grip creates two illusions of Bane to channel the spell on the target, both making it harder to interrupt and potentially allowing Bane to freely act while the illusions hold the victim in place.
• Slasher Smile: His teeth twist into an evil-looking grin.
• Status Infliction Attack: Specializes in sleep-related disables; Nightmare renders the target unit unable to move or attack, but any damage will wake them up (as well as transferring the Nightmare to the attacker if it's a right-click). Fiend's Grip, his ultimate, deals huge amounts of damage and cannot be broken unless Bane himself is interrupted. Additionally, allies can attack an enemy under its effect, making it extremely useful for taking down carries and other damage-dealers in the late game.
• Take That!: Towards Heroes of Newerth in one of his responses.
  Bane (after killing Anti-Mage): I must have reminded him of someone he hated! ^note Magebane is a playable character in HoN, and is a rough equivalent of Anti-Mage.
• Tulpa: The nightmares of a goddess, given a living, physical form.
• Vampiric Draining: Can steal HP with Brain Sap and mana with Fiend's Grip.

Batrider

"It's not the bat you gotta worry about... she eats fruit."

Voiced by: Dave Fennoy

The Batrider was once a mere farmboy working on his family's fields at the outskirts of the Yama Raskav Jungle, until a carnivorous morde-bat swooped down on him to take him away for dinner. Thinking quickly, he freed himself from the beast's claws and climbed onto its back, where he slashed at it with his farming tools. While his life was spared that day, he left the giant chiropteran's fatal crash site with an adrenaline rush that gave him the yearning to feel the skies once more. Over the years he would dive ever deeper into the treacherous jungle to find the caves his would-be predator roosted in, determined to feel the thrill of his near-death experience once again. Evidently, he succeeded.

Batrider is a fearsome and mobile nuker and initiator, capable of quickly burning down enemies' health and forcing them out of position. He also excels at jungling and lane harassment. He can drench his enemy in Sticky Napalm, which slows their movement speed and turn rate while amplifying the damage they take from Batrider's abilities and attacks. The ability has a very short cooldown and its debuff stacks, making prolonged engagements against Batrider a dangerous affair. Flamebreak hurls a firebomb that explodes in an area, pushing enemies away and burning their health down over time. With Firefly, Batrider takes to the skies, letting him fly and see over all terrain while leaving behind a fiery trail that damages enemies. Batrider's ultimate ability is Flaming Lasso, which binds an enemy and drags them along in his wake, often to a fiery death. The ability has a very short range, forcing Batrider to get up close and personal with his enemy. Batrider lives on the edge, and in the heat of combat, it certainly shows.

In Dota Underlords, Batrider is a tier 1 hero. His ability, Sticky Napalm, slows enemies and increases the damage they take from his attacks; this effect can stack.

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• Adaptation Species Change: Was a troll in DotA, but changed to an unidentified species for Dota 2, though he still bears a strong resemblance to a troll. In Dota Underlords, Batrider is part of the Troll alliance.
• Adventurer Outfit: The aviator variety.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: His skin is goldenrod-yellow.
• Animal Mecha: The Burning Iron cosmetic mount looks like a 'bat', but one made from wood and metal.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Your Black King Bar won't save you from Flaming Lasso; it goes through debuff immunity. While Linken's Sphere normally stops it cold, Batrider's Aghanim's Scepter upgrade allows Flaming Lasso to tie a second enemy to the first, and this second lasso ignores Linken's Sphere completely.
• Badass Biker: What his character was obviously modeled after.
• Badass Normal: He has no magical skills whatsoever, all he has is a bat and a seemingly-unlimited supply of fuel.
• Bat Out of Hell: Downplayed. His mount is a giant bat which spits fireballs as his right-click attack, though Batrider himself insists that the bat is a frugivore, and the enemy had better be aware of him instead (and indeed, Batrider is not a right-clicker, and his primary contributions to the team lie in his abilities, which are all his own and have little to do with the bat).
• Barrier Warrior: Flaming Lasso can be used on an ally to reduce all damage they take, if Batrider has Aghanim's Shard.
• Breath Weapon: His standard attack is his mount spitting fireballs. That's right - a fire-breathing bat!
• Casanova Wannabe: For a moment he even thinks about hitting on the Broodmother!
  Batrider: Broodmother, if you weren't already--ugh, never mind!
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Sticky Napalm increases damage that enemy units take from Batrider over an area, and can scale up to ten times.
• Delayed Explosion: The Flamebreak grenade takes time to reach its target point, meaning that Batrider has to aim it carefully lest its knockback effect accidentally saves the enemy.
• Difficult, but Awesome: On paper, Batrider's signature move, Flaming Lasso, seems pretty simple to use: just click on an enemy and drag them back to your team, disrupting their positioning and possibly taking out a key target just before a teamfight. But without good communication and coordination with your teammates, it's likely that they won't know how to follow up after your initiation, and Batrider himself generally lacks the damage to quickly finish off the victim by himself. Because of this, he has a garbage win rate in low-level games, but can be a real terror in high-level and pro games and has consistently been a first-pick/ban hero at tournaments despite repeated nerfs.
• Explosion Propulsion: Enemies hit by Flamebreak are knocked out from the point of impact.
• Flying Seafood Special: The mount that come with the Manta Marauder set is a manta ray. Which flies.
• Horse of a Different Color: As his name indicates, his mount is a bat. He can also replace the bat with a few different animals by equipping certain items, including an owl, crow, and even a manta ray.
• Kill It with Fire: His right-click attack and three of his four abilities are fire-based. The one that doesn't directly uses fire drenches foes in napalm (which he can then light on fire).
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Bessy the Batmeleon is a 'bat' with the head of a chameleon.
• Molotov Cocktail: Flamebreak throws a flaming cocktail of dangerous chemicals.
• Money Multiplier: Firefly can deal a total of 840 damage over its duration when maxed, which can be further boosted with Sticky Napalm. Batrider players often use Firefly to quickly farm stacked jungle camps and get an early Blink Dagger.
• Mounted Combat: He's called "Batrider" for a reason.
• No Name Given: He was once known as Jin'zakk in the original DotA, but that name was removed when he was ported to Dota 2.
• Not the Intended Use: When Batrider received an Aghanim's Scepter upgrade to let him drag two enemies with Flaming Lasso, it was ostensibly intended to increase his disruptive power while throwing in a bit more damage. However, players quickly found that the true value of the upgrade is that it gives him an answer to Linken's Sphere, which has historically been Batrider's hardest counter. As the secondary lasso ignores Linken's Sphere's Spellblock, it's not unheard of for a Batrider with Aghanim's to lasso a creep in order to get at a target with Linken's.
• Noun Verber
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • Players took advantage of Sticky Napalm, a skill that amplifies damage from Batrider on his victims, by building the constant DPS aura item Radiance, which turned Batrider into a real damage-dealer. Apparently Icefrog disagreed, as he proceeded to change Sticky Napalm so that Radiance could not (normally) trigger the bonus damage any more.
  • This also happened on the 6.82 beta test client with Urn of Shadows. As it had its damage type changed from HP Removal to Pure, this affected the way it interacted with Sticky Napalm, allowing each tick to deal 250+ damage, effectively allowing Batrider to deal upwards of 2000 damage with a single Urn of Shadows charge. Thankfully, this was fixed before it was introduced to the main game client.
• Pyromaniac: Batrider seems to be one judging from his responses when he uses his abilities or kills an enemy hero:
  Batrider: Roasted, toasted and burned to a crisp.
• Spam Attack: Sticky Napalm, with its short cooldown, low mana cost and stacking effect.
• Throat Light: The mouth of the Ghastly Nocturne Immortal bat glows bright with flames.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: His attacks include drenching enemies in napalm and throwing a Molotov Cocktail.
• Vapor Trail: Firefly leaves a trail of flames in Batrider's wake.
• What a Drag: Flaming Lasso drags any unfortunate victim in Batrider's wake.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: In a teamfight, Batrider's primary and often only contribution is to grab an enemy with Flaming Lasso and pull it into his team; any actual damage he deals is usually negligible. However, Flaming Lasso is one of the most disruptive abilities out there and also goes through spell immunity, so that's often all he needs to do in order to win a fight.

Karroch, the Beastmaster

"Unleash the beasts of war!"

Voiced by: Sam A. Mowry

Having lost both his parents during his childhood, Karroch was raised amongst the animals of the royal menagerie of the Last King of Slom. One day, an unknown beast was brought to the King, one that could communicate telepathically and pleaded for the mad tyrant to set it free. The King ignored the beast and ordered it to perform for his amusement, but when the animal refused to obey him, he had it beaten and imprisoned. Karroch secretly tended to the strange creature, which spoke to him and forged a bond, giving the boy the ability to talk back not only to the beast, but to all the animals in the menagerie. But the beast eventually died of its injuries, causing Karroch to be overcome with a rage. He freed all of the King's animals from their cages, and they rampaged throughout the castle, mauling the King to death. Karroch, aided by a stag, leapt over the castle walls and fled to freedom, growing up to become the Beastmaster, a warrior at one with the wild.

With one of the longest magic-immunity piercing stuns in the game and several summons to help him out, Beastmaster excels at staying alive even against the toughest odds. Though his spells may lack the raw damage potential of other heroes, he makes up for it with their strong versatility and support potential; he can frequently set up advantageous situations for his teammates or save an ally. Wild Axes has him hurl his two axes at any enemy in a long range and damages everything caught in their looping path, slicing down foes and trees alike. When an enemy is hit by the axes, they not only take damage, but receive a debuff which increases the damage they take from Beastmaster and his controlled units. Call of the Wild, his second spell, has two sub-abilities: the first summons a boar with a ranged slowing attack, and the second sends out a fearsome hawk that circles around Beastmaster and divebombs nearby enemies. Inner Beast provides a passive attack speed to every friendly unit in its radius, including his summoned units. His ultimate, Primal Roar, deals magical damage and stuns a target for up to four seconds, and grants Beastmaster and his cohorts increased movement speed, allowing them to rush in to finish off their prey.

In Artifact, Beastmaster is a red hero with the Active Ability Call of the Wild, which summons a Loyal Beast, a creep that modifies its enemies with -1 Attack when dealing battle damage. His signature card, Primal Roar, stuns an enemy unit that's blocking an allied red hero for one round and sends its neighbors to random other lanes.

In Dota Underlords, Beastmaster is a tier 2 hero. His ability, Wild Axes, has him throw his two axes, damaging enemies hit and increasing the damage Beastmaster deals to them; the effect is doubled if both axes hit.

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• Adaptation Name Change: The Beastmaster in the original DotA was none other than the Warcraft character Rexxar, meaning that he had to be given a new name (Karroch) in Dota 2.
• Adaptation Species Change: As the original DotA used Rexxar, who was a half-orc, half-ogre in Warcraft, as its base design, Dota 2 turned him into a human.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Primal Roar can stun its target through spell immunity, and knock back spell immune enemies between him and the primary target (although no damage will be dealt to spell immune units and secondary targets won't be slowed after the push). It's one of the most powerful disables in the game since it can be cast from range and will guarantee stun its target for up to 4 seconds (doubles if you purchase a Refresher Orb, which is a common item for him).
• Asshole Victim: The Last King of Slom in his backstory, who was corrupt enough that one of the greatest noble houses in his kingdom tried to overthrow him and has absolutely no respect for animals. Karroch setting his menagerie loose on him was nothing short of poetic justice for himself, the beast he befriended, and Lycan.
• Beard of Barbarism: A wandering wild man with a thick beard.
• The Beastmaster: While Beastmaster's own damage output may be mediocre, he can summon a boar and hawk with Call of the Wild, and Inner Beast gives a significant DPS increase when paired with his summoned units. Slap a Helm of the Overlord on him, and Beastmaster can single-handedly focus down most heroes and towers before Primal Roar wears off.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": His boar and hawk don't look like what they're insisted to be. Changing them with cosmetic items will turn them into entirely different species as well.
  Dark Willow: Look, he may be loyal, but I don't care what you say. That thing isn't a boar.
• Dual Wielding: Wields a pair of tomahawks.
• Familiar: The hawk and boar summoned by Call of the Wild.
• Field Power Effect: Inner Beast increases the attack speed of Beastmaster and any nearby allies, and is possessed by his illusions as well. While the numbers aren't highly impressive, its strength is in the fact that it stacks on top of existing attack speed buffs and applies to creeps and summons as well, so Beastmaster being in the general area of a teamfight can greatly augment the amount of physical damage the whole team does, including the supports.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: How can he retrieve his throwing axes is rather inexplicable.
  Beastmaster (casting Wild Axes): ''Boomeraxe.''
• Jack of All Stats: Beastmaster can push, jungle and semi-carry with Call of the Wild and Inner Beast, initiate and disable with Primal Roar, and provide utility and carry auras with his inherent tankiness. There are lots of heroes who can do all of these individual tasks better - but very few who can turn their hand to so many. Because of this, he tends to pick up whatever responsibilities his team needs filling the most. For example, if your team didn't have a proper initiator, you'd probably pick up a Blink Dagger so that you can provide that.
• Magic Knight: Beastmaster has a large array of spells that give him vast amounts of utility (Wild Axes, for instance, can be used to cut down trees and stack or kill Ancient camps), and Inner Beast helps to give his physical damage output some impact. However, he's stronger in the casting department than in the fighting department, moreso since he's very mana-independent (Wild Axes and Primal Roar are the only spells he has that consume large amounts of mana), and Inner Beast isn't a very strong damage steroids.
• Nature Hero
• Poisonous Person: The boar's attack can inflict a poison that slows attack and movement speeds. At lower levels, it's not very impressive, but it grows to a much more respectable level as Call of the Wild is leveled up.
• Raised by Wolves: He grew up among the Last King of Slom's menagerie after losing both his parents at a young age.
• Some Dexterity Required: Because the boars summoned by Call of the Wild are controllable, proper Beastmaster play revolves around being able to micromanage where you place them and how you use them.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Karroch could communicate telepathically with an unidentified beast in his backstory, and in doing so, he gained the ability to speak to all animals.
• Stone Wall: Beastmaster is fairly tanky (and can become even more so by building the right items), but his utility-oriented skillset and so-so right-click attack mean that he has trouble dishing out damage to the degree that a true carry can - most of his damage output rather comes from his summons and Helm of the Dominator minion.
• Summon Magic: Call of the Wild lets Beastmaster summon a hawk and a boar, with varying increases in effectiveness as he levels the skill up.
• Super-Scream: Beastmaster's ultimate, Primal Roar, has him yell with enough force to push aside anyone who stands in the way and stuns the primary target, then increases the speed of any allies inside the area of effect.
• They Have the Scent!: Referenced in some of his lines in both the original DotA and Dota 2.
  Rexxar: I've got the scent.
  Karroch: ''Mmm, caught your scent.''
• Tribal Face Paint
• Walking Shirtless Scene: With bonus Loincloth.
• Walking the Earth: As a wandering vagrant.

Mangix, the Brewmaster

"Drink and be bleary, for tomorrow we die."

Voiced by: Nolan North

Born to a Celestial father and a mortal mother, Mangix was raised deep in the Wailing Mountains in the Ruined City among the Order of Oyo, an organizations of spiritual brewers who commune with the spirits through drink. Aspiring to attain the most honored rank of Brewmaster, he trained until he earned the right to challenge the title's current owner. Over nine long days, Mangix and his foe fought and drunk, and stumbled and struck, until eventually the original Brewmaster collapsed in an inebriated stupor. The victorious Mangix was granted his title of desire, and like all Brewmasters before him, he left his home to wander the world, seeking answers to the cosmos' greatest questions through drink while also defending himself through the powers of his spirit ancestors.

Brewmaster is a very powerful Drunken Master, being able to inflict a lot of damage and take little damage in return. Brewmaster is able to stop his foes from escaping or fighting efficiently by using his ability Thunder Clap which creates a shockwave around him that slows and decreases movement speed on ground units around him. He can further ruin his opponents' coordination with Cinder Brew, which slows enemies in an area and makes them confused, causing them to occasionally hit themselves when attacking. Should a target take a large amount of burst magic damage, the brew ignites, dealing damage over time; this effect can be refreshed by further instances of damage for the duration of Cinder Brew. His third ability is Drunken Brawler which allows Mangix to switch between stances, giving him the ability to alternate between move speed and evasion, armor and magic resistance, critical chance, or status resistance and slowing his attack targets depending on what the situation requires. These effects are tripled for a short period after using Cinder Brew. Finally, making him even trickier to face, his ultimate ability Primal Split causes Mangix to temporarily split into 4 Brewlings, each with their own stats and abilities. The Brewlings are: Earth, who is tanky, immune to magic, and can use Boulder to stun an enemy and have chance to deal damage in a close radius; Fire, who is the quickest and a fighter, burning enemies around him with Permanent Immolation; and Storm, the mage Brewling who can Dispel Magic which removes positive buffs and deals heavy damage to summoned targets, remove an enemy with Cyclone and make himself invisible with Wind Walk; and Void, who can use Astral Pull to force itself and another unit and a specified direction. Aghanim's Scepter unlocks the ability Primal Companion, summoning a permanent Brewling corresponding to his current Drunken Brawler stance to accompany the Brewmaster. With his attunement to the spirits, Brewmaster is an extremely daunting opponent capable of winning fights that few other heroes can survive.

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• Achilles' Heel: Mangix is particularly vulnerable to silences, since most Brewmaster players will often attempt to wait until the last possible second to cast Primal Split in order to make the most of a teamfight.
• Alcohol Hic: Present in a few of his quotes.
• Anti-Structure: Earth's Demolish passive ability increases his damage when attacking buildings.
• The Artifact: Even though he now spawns four brewlings in the latest iteration of his ult, he still has quotes regarding the ability back from when it produces three. Lore-wise, however, it is almost understandable.
• Big Fun
• Beware the Silly Ones: Appears to be a drunkard, but he's more like a Drunken Master.
• Boisterous Bruiser
• Booze-Based Buff: Played straight with Drunken Brawler, which gives him various buffs depending on his active stance that grow stronger after he uses Cinder Brew. Inverted for opponents targeted by Cinder Brew, who instead get slowed.
• Booze Flamethrower: Enemies drenched in Cinder Brew can be set on fire once they receive enough magic damage during the debuff's duration.
• Character Select Forcing: Although it has been averted since then, Cinder Brew is infamous for introducing what would have been the first Element-based mechanic in the game where the Brew ignite if hit with a specific set of Fire-based spell such as Lina or Jakiro. Due to the mechanic being universally criticized, least of all having synergy that is completely forced as opposed to ones that happen to work well together, this mechanic did not last long and was quickly changed so that it ignites upon being being struck with a set amount of any spell damage.
• Critical Hit Class: In Fire Stance, Drunken Brawler passively gives Brewmaster a chance of hitting critically with all attacks.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Primal Split turns him from a slightly goofy inebriated panda-man into a deadly platoon of magical spirit warriors, and he becomes almost unkillable during its duration.
• Decoy Getaway: Primal Split can be used as one, sending either Earth, for his priority return and slow-immunity, or Storm, for his invisibility, back while the other three wreck havoc on the enemy team and get focused down in an attempt to kill Brewmaster.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Storm's second ability Dispel Magic. Used properly, it can remove powerful buffs (like a Double Damage rune or Ogre Magi's Bloodlust), but on the whole enemy team; or save multiple teammates from deadly mass-disables (like Ember Spirit's Searing Chains). Used badly, it can inadvertently help enemies by purging these aforementioned disables from them (which might very well be the Thunder Clap or Cinder Brew that you just used), or good buffs from allies. Being able to use Dispel Magic effectively is what separates a good Brewmaster from an average one.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: If his responses to killing someone are any indication, he doesn't really realizes that he's actually killing people.
  After killing a hero: What's wrong? Can't hold your liquor? hehe... Hello?
• Drunken Master: He spends his time on the battlefield completely drunk. One of his abilities is even called Drunken Brawler.
• Elemental Powers: His four elemental aspects from Primal Split use the same elements as the four Spirit heroes: Storm, Earth, Fire, and Void. Brewmaster in his regular form can channel them to a lesser degree with Drunken Brawler, which gives him bonuses based on one of the four.
• Epic Flail: An odd combination of what can be called nunchaku, but with a staff on one end is his weapon. However, it's a real weapon.
• Fragile Speedster: Fire moves at maximum speed and constantly deals damage to every enemy around him, but is also extremely frail.
• Glowing Eyes: His elemental spirits.
• Improbable Weapon User: He uses his barrel of booze as much as a weapon as his staff, as seen in his Thunder Clap skill.
  "It's a kegger!!"
• Invisibility: Storm's Wind Walk turns him temporarily invisible.
• Literal Split Personality: His ultimate, Primal Split, splits him into four elemental warriors, which function as individual heroes for the duration. Primal Companion allows him to call out one of them to his side, lasting until either it is killed, Brewmaster casts Primal Companion again to summon a new one, or Brewmaster uses Primal Split.
• Locked Out of the Fight: Storm's Cyclone temporarily removes an enemy from the fight by rendering them invulnerable and unable to act. Given its long duration, short cooldown, and good range, this can be quite effective at negating key enemies.
• Magic Knight: Brewmaster is a respectable physical damage dealer and manfighter, since he has abilities that involve negating opposing auto-attacks while strengthening his own; on the other hand, the Primal Split spirits can provide a plethora of utility from exceptional disables, survivability against magic and physical attacks, to damage output.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: A heroic variant; Mangix sometimes refers to the four spirits as his "drinking buddies".
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Brewmaster is slow, but he packs a wallop with Drunken Brawler and Thunder Clap and can soak up quite a bit of punishment, especially with Cinder Brew and Drunken Brawler causing most attacks aimed at him to miss.
  • Earth is the slowest of the four elemental spirits, but he carries a ranged, damage-dealing stun, has the highest health pool, is immune to spells, and gets massive bonus damage against buildings.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Although Storm Spirit is now a human, Brewmaster still labels him as his cousin, likely due to his Celestial heritage. In the original DotA, both Brewmaster and Storm Spirit were Pandarens.
  • While he is a red panda now, his Primal Split spirits have a giant panda pattern like the original's elemental pandaren.
• No-Sell: Earth is immune to magic.
• Random Number God: Cinder Brew paired with Storm stance gives him a whopping 90% evasion for a few seconds. If you're trying to kill Brewmaster with autoattacks, you'll be there for quite some time.
• Shockwave Stomp: Thunder Clap damages and slows enemies in a huge radius by slamming his barrel into the ground.
• Some Dexterity Required: As soon as Brewmaster pops his ultimate, you'll have to control four heroes simultaneously, each one with his own separate skills and abilities that work best chained together. A well-played Primal Split, however, can be extremely impressive and deadly.
• Stance System: Drunken Brawler lets Brewmaster cycle through four stances corresponding to his Primal Split elements, each one granting a different benefit: Earth Stance gives him armor and health regeneration, Storm Stance grants movement speed and evasion, Fire Stance allows his attacks to deal critical hits, and Void Stance gives him status resistance and slows Brewmaster's attack targets. His current stance also determines which Brewling is summoned by Primal Companion.
• Status-Buff Dispel: Storm's Dispel Magic ability, which dispels buffs in an area.
• Stout Strength: He is noticeably overweight but hits like a truck and can tank a considerable amount of damage.
• Super-Toughness: Brewmaster has fairly high Strength gain and, with the appropriate stances, he can either have one of the highest evasion values in the game or a truckload of armor and magic resistance. This is in addition to dealing with his ultimate, which forces you to either fight them head on for a grand total of 20 seconds, or kill all 3 of them, no easy feat given that one's spell immune, another runs extremely fast, and the last can turn invisible. Escalated even further with Brewmaster's favored item build of Blink Dagger and Heart of Tarrasque, letting him teleport away after Primal Split ends since Brewmaster himself never took damage during that duration and also healed for a 3rd of his health while you were fighting the spirits. And if he gets Aghanim's Shard, Primal Split has doubled duration and can be cancelled at will, making him even harder to catch.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: When performing Primal Split, Brewmaster becomes invulnerable for the duration of the transformation, until after the elementals are able to move.

Black Arachnia, the Broodmother

"You're not afraid of spiders, are you?"

Voiced by: Ellen McLain

Black Arachnia had resided in the volcanic caves beneath Mount Pyrotheos for centuries when her peaceful life with her countless children was interrupted by Ptolopthales, the Vizier of Greed, deciding to build his Magnetic Ziggurat on the mountain where they lived. The edifice and its untold riches attracted a great number of thieves and treasure hunters to the spider-infested caverns, often threatening Arachnia's spawn. When the Broodmother decided to visit Ptolopthales, she found him unwilling to solve the issue. In response, she and her young simply ate him. However, the death of the ziggurat's owner only resulted in an increase in the number of intruders to her lair, and when one of her spiderlings was stepped on by a careless adventurer, the Broodmother swore that she would no longer sit idly. With that, she set out into the outside world, determined to eliminate all potential threats to her babies.

Black Arachnia, the Broodmother is notorious for being one of the best pushers in the game. However, she is also an adept carry and ganker. Her playstyle is defined by her summoned units, the infamous spiderlings. With these, she is able to quickly overwhelm foes and buildings alike, decimating everything in her path in a matter of seconds. Her first skill, Insatiable Hunger drives Broodmother into a frenzy, temporarily giving her a huge attack bonus and incredible lifesteal. Her second skill, Spin Web spawns a large-radius web, either near Broodmother's location or connected to any previously placed web, that gives her and her spider spawn extra health regeneration and movement speed, and allows them to pass otherwise impassable terrain. However, only so many webs can exist on the battlefield at one time. Her third skill shoots a Silken Bola at a target, slowing it, causing it to miss some of its attacks, and causing all attacks against it to deal bonus damage. And finally, her ultimate Spawn Spiderlings shoots a weaponized ball of her young into a target, dealing damage and causing the affected unit to spawn spiderlings if they are killed within the duration of a debuff. The aforementioned spiderlings also have the ability to slow and apply damage over time to enemies, and they can even spawn their very own spiderites, essentially miniature versions of themselves. With the ability's low cooldown and the Spiderlings' ability to spawn more spiders, Broodmother can quickly wash over her foes with an endless swarm of spiders.

In Dota Underlords, Broodmother is a tier 4 hero. Her ability, Spin Web, surrounds an enemy with a web, slowing the movement and attack speed of enemies standing in it.

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• Anti-Escape Mechanism: Silken Bola slows enemies by up to 40%, and gives them a 60% chance to miss, which lets Broodmother shut down most auto-attacking carries like Sniper or Drow Ranger.
• Art Evolution: The November 2012 patch gave her a more monstrous-looking face similar to a jumping spider in contrast to her original face◊. She also had her ability icons updated later on, in the 10/21/2013 patch.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Broodmother herself, as well as her spiderlings.
• Booby Trap: Spinner's Snare creates an invisible web line, which roots, deals damage to and reveals any enemy hero that walks through it, while also notifying Broodmother's team.
• Born as an Adult: Broodmother's Spiderling offspring can spawn their own Spiderite offspring as soon as they're born.
• Chest Burster: Targets killed by Spawn Spiderlings will have Spiderlings spawned from them. Furthermore, units killed by Spiderlings will have Spiderites born from them.
• Cobweb Jungle: Spin Web can create a large web (in comparison to most of the units) in an area. It's not surprising for a game involving Broodmother to have an entire lane covered in cobwebs.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Broodmother is one of the most micromanagement-reliant heroes in the game. Though the spiderlings are relatively simple compared to Chen's, Enchantress' or Lone Druid's minions, their fragility and vulnerability to AoE attacks makes it fairly easy to feed large amounts of gold to enemies if you aren't careful. However, a good Broodmother is able to assert incredible pressure on the offlane, forcing the enemies to constantly focus on defending or risk losing barracks, making her one of the best space creators in the game.
• Extra Eyes: Six, to be exact (though it's a normal number for a spider, of course).
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In her lore, the death of a single spiderling is what sets her off and makes her declare war on the world. Gameplay-wise, she'll happily send swarms of her young to their doom, using them as mere cannon fodder when pushing towers. That being said, not taking care of your Spiderlings at all is also heavily discouraged because carelessly feeding a swarm of them to an enemy hero with splash damage (or a Battle Fury) is almost as bad as feeding Broodmother herself.
• Giant Spider: Quite obviously. Even her spiderlings are huge compared to real life spiders.
• Healing Factor: Spin Web provides a significant boost to Broodmother's health regeneration, giving her great sustain right from the start.
• Home Field Advantage: When she's in one of her webs, Broodmother is devilishly fast and can out-heal most other heroes... but if she's somehow caught out in the open, there's really not much she can do to save herself.
• Item Caddy: Since Broodmother can farm lanes relatively safely and constantly push towers, she can often earn respectable amounts of gold to buy items that let her adapt to the enemy lineup as needed.
• Life Drain: Insatiable Hunger gives her temporary lifesteal on her basic attacks, as well as bonus damage.
• Mama Bear: Don't dare harm her Spiderlings, lest you incur the wrath of mother. Although they're used as Cannon Fodder, good players will take care of their Spiderlings to avoid feeding large amounts of gold to the enemies.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Spin Web covers a large area with a semi-permanent web that gives Broodmother a series of powerful bonuses. Webs are a really key part of her playstyle, giving her unrestricted movement, a movement speed boost, and health regeneration. Basically Broodmother is not the same hero without her webs - and this is one of the key reasons she tends to stay in one area of the map instead of moving around like most heroes do. Broodmother's standard play is to setup camp in the offlane and basically spend the entire game there. She arrives, gets her webs setup early and is almost impossible to shift away from the lane without considerable enemy manpower being used. She tends to be a very solitary hero who doesn't interact with her team anything like as much as most others.
• The Minion Master: Her primary fighting style is to create a horde of Spiderlings and Spiderites to slow and incapacitate enemies before using her ultimate to take down enemy heroes.
• Mother of a Thousand Young: Broodmother gameplay involves massing up dozens of her offspring at a time and then crushing through her current lane with sheer weight of numbers. She is a spider, after all.
• Piñata Enemy: One of the hardest aspects of playing Broodmother is to avoid feeding your Spiderlings, as a swarm of them can give as much gold as waves of normal creeps to the enemy team. Being up against heroes with Cleave or some kind of ranged multi-hit ability (Medusa, Luna) makes this even more problematic, sometimes to the point that you don't dare use the Spiderlings any more, reducing your effectiveness. Abilities that are more effective the more enemies that are hit by it (Legion Commander's Overwhelming Odds, or Earthshaker's ultimate) also can make the Spiderlings a liability.
• Poisonous Person: Broodmother's spiderlings can poison her enemies with their bite.
• Projectile Webbing: Silken Bola slows down a target enemy, causes them to miss and deals damage.
• Recursive Ammo: As an unusual example, her spawned Spiderlings create smaller Spiderites on every kill.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning
• Shout-Out:
  • Shares a name with Blackarachnia from Beast Wars. Unsurprisingly, her beast form was a spider.
  • She also has a quote from Charlotte's Web:
  Broodmother: ''Some pig!''
• Simple, yet Awesome: Broodmother normally has the weaknesses of being very hard to control while being easily countered by area of effect nukes and cleaves that can turn her spiders into free gold and in some cases damage. That is, unless you go for an unconventional build that takes advantage of the massive advantages you gain from your webs, passive and ultimate. Suddenly, you can beat any hero in the game by hitting like a truck and instantly healing up any damage they manage to deal to you, negating your normal squishiness while being far easier to control due to the lack of spider micromanagement.
• Spawn Broodling: Spawn Spiderlings plants Broodmother's offspring inside the target while dealing damage; if the target is killed within a short time of impact, the Spiderlings hatch, and they can also plant Spiderites inside enemies upon attacking them that will also hatch upon the target's death.
• Spiders Are Scary: A giant spider who will either fill you with her eggs, eat you alive, or let her babies eat you alive.
• Spider Swarm: If left to her own devices, Broodmother can wind up with twenty or thirty Spiderlings and Spiderites under her control, allowing her to easily push lanes and siege towers.
• Wall Crawl: Broodmother gains free pathing capabilities on her webs so long as she hasn't taken player-based damage in the last three seconds (similar to a Blink Dagger). This means that she can move across normally impassable terrain, such as up cliffs or through trees.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Because of their inherent squishiness, Broodmother's Spiderlings can get easily squashed by area nukes or cleaves even with their passive 50% magic resistance, potentially turning them into an unlimited source of free farm for enemy heroes. A particularly common joke is how Earthshaker can easily wipe an entire team with Echo Slam if Broodmother is on it.
• Weaponized Offspring: Broodmother's nuke, Spawn Spiderlings, involves her injecting her eggs into an enemy, which hatch when the victim is killed.
• Zerg Rush: Broodmother's main pushing strategy is to farm up a massive horde of spiders and send them on a suicide mission to the nearest tower. It works surprisingly well given that towers can only attack one target at a time (temporarily multiple with Glyph of Fortification, but Broodmother will still have many more Spiderlings than the tower can hit at once), but if heroes with area damage or Battle Fury get thrown into the mix, the defenseless Spiderlings effectively become free gold.

Chen, the Holy Knight

"You can learn faith at the end of a sword."

Voiced by: Eric Newsome

Chen was born into the bandit tribes of the rain-parched Hazhadal Barrens, who have learned to tame the desert locuthi, a type of wingless dragon. The people of the desert quarrelled constantly over its limited resources, and one day, Chen's tribe made the fatal mistake of trying to ambush a caravan of the Knights of the Fold, worshipers of the deity Obelis. The Knights made quick work of the tribesmen and their dragon thralls, and Chen was captured for execution. But Chen faced his death sentence with such fearlessness that his captors instead lowered their blades and let him choose between conversion to the faith of Obelis or death. Chen accepted the conversion without hesitation and joined the Fold with ferocious zealotry, now seeking out non-believers to offer them the same choice.

Chen is a support hero that can bend creeps to his cause, and as such plays as an efficient jungler, ganker, and pusher. The crux of his kit is Holy Persuasion, which lets him take control of a target creep and use the jungle creeps' abilities to his benefit. With Aghanim's Shard, this even extends to the powerful Ancient Creeps. Additionally, using this ability on an allied unit will teleport it to your location after a short delay. He can also use Penitence to slow an enemy and increase the attack speed of those attacking it, making them more vulnerable to his creeps and teammates. Divine Favor is an aura which increases allies' health regeneration and damage, and also increases the effect of any healing they receive by 25%. The damage bonus is doubled for Chen's creeps and summons. Finally, Chen can rejuvenate and save his allies from literally anywhere on the map with his ultimate ability Hand of God, which instantly heals all allied heroes and all of Chen's controlled units, with unlimited range. Armed with the power of enthrallment and the magic of the Fold, Chen is prepared to pass judgment on his enemies.

In Artifact, Chen is a green hero. He has the Active Ability Holy Persuasion, which allows him to take control of an enemy creep. His signature card, Hand of God, is a spell which fully heals all allied units and grants them one round of damage immunity.

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• Adaptation Species Change: Was an orc riding a wolf in DotA, but changed a human on a boar in 2.
• Ambiguously Brown: He is presumably from the Dota 2 equivalent of the Middle East, judging by his facial features and skin tone.
• The Artifact: If you're wondering why Chen is the only "Knight" that isn't a strength hero, it's because he was a strength hero before patch 6.15 reimagined him from a strength carry that could take over a single wave of creeps as a Limit Break to a creep control-centered intelligence support. Many years later, version 7.33 turned him into an universal hero.
• The Beastmaster: He can get creeps, including jungle and Ancient ones, to follow him with Holy Persuasion.
• Can't Catch Up: The whole idea behind picking Chen is to invoke this trope on enemy heroes by snowballing your own team with ganks, tower pushes and a fast Rosh. However, if enemies can farm back up, Chen himself can be victim to this trope because of the near-total lack of scaling of his converted creeps.
• Church Militant: The Knights of the Fold, a group of which he is a member. Convert to their religion, or Chen will sic his army of jungle creeps on you.
• Combat Medic: Divine Favor increases the health regeneration of nearby allies, while Hand of God heals all allied unit on the map.
• Compelling Voice: Chen's signature skill, Holy Persuasion, converts creeps into his loyal followers.
• Continuing is Painful: Because neutral camps are randomly generated, losing all of your jungle creeps generally means that you'll be forced to spend a lot of time to recruit all the creeps you need again.
• Cool Helmet
• Crutch Character: Early on, Chen and his creeps can gank enemy heroes and push down towers with ease - when most heroes haven't finished their core items yet, a single converted big creep can be nearly as powerful as themselves, and it's hard to resist a tower dive from Chen in this stage. However, the longer the game goes on, the less effective Chen becomes - Hand of God loses impact as enemies get more HP and damage items, while his creeps, which don't scale at all (aside from a HP boost from Holy Persuasion, which is almost always maxed at level 7), will be dying left and right because their HP are too low to survive teamfights, though this is alleviated somewhat by Penitence and Aghanim's Shard, which allows him to convert ancient creeps, mainly for their auras.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Chen and his religion have traits of the Inquisition - they have a monotheistic faith based around the god Obelis, and are ruthlessly devoted to converting non-believers and rooting out heretics.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Chen is one of the most micromanagement-reliant heroes in the game (second only to Meepo and Arc Warden). Not only do you need to have a fairly good knowledge of control groups and a fair amount of prior jungling experience (to say nothing of the micromanagement required to actively use your converted creeps), but a good Chen player also needs to know which neutrals are worth converting, based on their various skills and auras, for specific situations. A good Chen, however, is one of the strongest and most versatile supports in the game, as he can rescue allies from ganks, buff teammates with his various monster auras, disable enemies at just the opportune time, or heal his entire team with his ultimate.
• Elite Army: Even though Chen's creeps are fairly weak and easily killed, they're generally treated as valuable due to being able to give your team additional capabilities (from disables by the Centaur Conqueror and Dark Troll Summoner, to auras and buffs by the Alpha Wolf and Ogre Frostmage, to nuking power by the Satyr Tormenter and Harpy Stormcrafter). On top of that, losing a creep means not only that you just fed the enemy free gold and experience, but also that you have to go back into the jungle to find a replacement. This can be played straight once he gets an Aghanim's Shard, which allows him to recruit Ancient creeps, which are fairly durable and possess useful auras for Chen's team, with a few packing useful active abilities as well.
• Field Power Effect: Chen doesn't carry any auras himself, but he can persuade creeps that do, allowing him to grant his team a variety of bonuses.
• Full-Boar Action: His default mount is a boar-like creature.
• The Fundamentalist: He's not very fond of Witch Doctor and Shadow Shaman because of their religions.
• Glowing Eyes: Has glowing white-blue eyes.
• Great Escape: Casting Holy Persuasion on an allied hero at low health can save them in a situation where they would otherwise die to the enemy.
• Horse of a Different Colour: His mount is one of the Locuthi dragons mentioned in his lore. He can replace it with many different animals by equipping cosmetic items, such as a wolf, pig, tiger, or rat, but none of them are a horse.
• Knight Templar: Chen believes that his mission is to convert or kill all unbelievers. He himself is a converted infidel who was spared execution due to his conversion.
• Light 'em Up: Primarily fights with the power of light.
• Light Is Not Good: He uses holy powers with a light motif, and is also a rather unpleasant zealot.
• Magic Staff: Chen attacks by shooting energy bolts from his staff.
• Mind Rape: Penitence slows enemies by testing their resolve.
• Monster Allies: Holy Persuasion coverts creeps into Chen's loyal followers.
• Not the Intended Use: "Fountain hooking", an old strategy that involved Pudge hooking an enemy at the same time that Chen recalls Pudge to the fountain, dragging the target along for the ride and resulting in a free kill.
• Power Up Letdown: Chen's Aghanim Scepter allows his Neutral creeps to sacrifice their lives in order to heal a target ally based on the current level of Hand of God. Even putting aside the fact that you're giving up a valuable creep that you probably won't get in a while, using one will put the others on cooldown so you can't continuously heal your allies to save them from being ganked or gain huge advantage in teamfights, pretty much just making it a poor man's version of Hand of God. With the same amount of gold required, a Guardian Greaves, Lotus Orb or even Holy Locket can do everything that Chen's Scepter does but better.
• Random Number God: Various aspects of Chen play revolves around how generous the rolls are to you.
  • How well your jungling phase goes can really depend on what camps are spawned every minute, since that will determine the first creep that you convert. For instance, getting an early Wildwing camp can greatly boost your jungling phase since you can use the Wildwing Ripper's Tornado to quickly clear a large camp that's been stacked a few times.
  • Once you get past the laning stage, it can be tricky to get the exact creep that you need for a certain situation, since the only thing that determines which camp will spawn is that it won't be the same as the one that was occupying that camp before. This can be particularly punishing if you lost the Centaur Conqueror that you needed for a reliable 2-second area stun, and none of the camps spawn another Centaur camp for several minutes.
• The Red Mage: Chen can hinder enemies with Penitence, buff his teammates with Divine Favor, heal them with Hand of God and teleport them to safety with Holy Persuasion.
• The Remnant: Chen's creeps can still carry on his work and even kill players when he's dead.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: The Royal Mount of the Rat King is a rat big enough for Chen to ride.
• Shout-Out: To Spongebob Squarepants of all things with one of his death quotes:
  Chen: My leg!
• Some Dexterity Required: Controlling Chen? Easy enough. Microing Chen and an army of creeps, all with different abilities, while trying to keep everyone alive and getting maximum mileage out of all those abilities and keeping an eye on the minimap to decide when to drop Hand of God? Considerably more difficult.
• Squishy Wizard: If the enemy can get past his converted creeps, they'll find Chen himself rather fragile and easy to kill.
• Stone Wall: After he gets Aghanim's Shard, Chen can control even Ancient creeps with Holy Persuasion. Though by the time window when he can afford it, they can't do much damage anymore, they are still very hard to kill thanks to their huge HP pool (2300 for the Black Dragon and the Granite Golem, 1700 for the Thunderhide) and magic resistance.
• Teleportation: Holy Persuasion allows Chen to teleport his creeps or teammates to his location, and Divine Favor can teleport friendly heroes to the fountain with Aghanim's Shard. This can be used to yank an allied hero away from danger, or bring his creeps back to him when he uses a Town Portal Scroll or Boots of Travel.
• Weaksauce Weakness: While Chen's creeps can be quite powerful in the right hands, they can become easy prey against abilities that can instantly kill creeps. This means that Chen can become helpless against Hand of Midas, Doom's Devour and so on. This weakness can be alleviated by getting Aghanim's Shard, since Ancient creeps are immune to all of these abilities except for Lifestealer's Infest, Devour and Enchant with a level 20 talent.

Rattletrap, the Clockwerk

"I have a degree in mechanical domineering!"

Voiced by: Sam A. Mowry

Like all Keen, Rattletrap survives in a dangerous world using a mixture of gadgetry and wit. Born into a family of clockmakers, he spent many years as an apprentice in his father's business, but unfortunately, war came to his lands, destroying his village and putting an end to his dreams of a peaceful life. Rattletrap's father, with his dying words, instructed him to become a warrior, and the son obliged by applying his knowledge of clockwork machinery to build a suit of powered armor carrying all manner of highly advanced devices. Now equipped with the power to overcome virtually any foe he encounters, Rattletrap has become a living weapon of war far sturdier and deadlier than even the most well-armored of knights.

Rattletrap is the one-two killing machine. As both an initiator and a ganker, he can get close and start beating his foes into scrap metal and escape without a dent. Clockwerk's first ability, Battery Assault, causes bits of shrapnel to periodically pop out of Clockwerk's armor, dealing damage and mini-stunning nearby foes to prevent their escape whether by running or using a Town Portal Scroll. This has the potential to be one of the most damaging spells in the game if all of the hits land, which is made easier by Clockwerk's second spell, Power Cogs: it summons 8 cogs around him, trapping nearby foes and pushing away those that get close to the traps, damaging and draining mana in the process. His third ability, Rocket Flare, fires a global-range rocket that damages enemies in the area-of-effect and gives vision of the struck area. With its infinite range it can help finish off weak and fleeing enemies, scout key areas such as Roshan's pit, or find targets for Clockwerk's ultimate ability, which allows him to enter the fray in seconds: Hookshot fires a long-range harpoon at any unit, friend or foe, and pulls Clockwerk straight to them, which is useful for retreating to the safety of an ally, or more commonly for getting close to an unsuspecting foe to beat them down with Clockwerk's other spells. Don't let your guard down when playing against the Clockwerk, or this mechanized warrior will find an opportunity to hook onto you when you least expect it.

In Dota Underlords, Clockwerk is a tier 1 hero. His ability, Battery Assault, fires bits of shrapnel at random nearby foes over 5 seconds, dealing damage and mini-stunning them.

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• Adaptation Species Change: In DotA, he was known as "Clockwerk Goblin" and was a Clockwork Creature. He was changed to a fully organic Keen in Dota 2, making him the same race as Tinker and Sniper, though the armor design still bears a goblin motif.
• Anti-Escape Mechanism: All of Rattletrap's abilities make him extremely hard to escape from once he has you in his sights:
  • Battery Assault, on top of dealing loads of damage over time, will mini-stun the enemy every time it connects, forcing them to stop (and cancelling any channeled abilities). This means that a Clockwerk walking alongside a lone opponent can slow them down drastically, on top of the damage. In 7.07 he gains a level 25 talent to decrease the interval of Battery Assault damage to 0.3 s, preventing even the likes of Anti-Mage from escaping.
  • Power Cogs will lock down anybody within a certain radius of Clockwerk, preventing them from moving outside of an extremely small radius (all while being trapped right next to him).
  • Rocket Flare has global range, allowing smart players to spot out enemies (including invisible ones with the appropriate talent), or even kill weakened opponents with good aim.
  • Hookshot's massive cast range allows Clockwerk to instantly latch on to and fly up to opponents that are even remotely near him.
• The Artifact: His name, Rattletrap, isn't a Keen name, but comes from the first Defense of the Ancients, where he was a Warcraft clockwork goblin.
• Barrier Warrior: Power Cogs forms a barrier of eight energised cogs around Clockwerk, trapping nearby units and shocking enemies if they approach, and provides barriers that block magical damage to allies standing next to him.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Clockwerk refers to mana as fuel.
• Clock Punk
• Clockwork Creature: Downplayed. His suit of armor is incredibly complex, with many whirring gizmos and ticking parts, albeit gasoline-powered, but Clockwerk himself is a completely organic being. Played straight in the first DotA.
• Company Cross References:
  • One of his Rocket Flare lines is said in a similar tone to the "Pills here!" lines in Left 4 Dead.
  Clockwerk: Flares here!
  • And to Team Fortress 2:
    Clockwerk (respawning): "Bleep bloop, I am a robot. Eh, just kidding."
• Cool Helmet
• Defog of War: His third ability, Rocket Flare, on top of having global range and dealing damage, lights up the area where it explodes for several seconds, and reveals terrain as it flies over, making it useful for scouting out areas on the other side of the map.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Despite its global range, Rocket Flare travels fairly slowly, meaning that it can be difficult to hit targets that aren't standing still if you're shooting your flare anywhere that isn't on the same screen as Clockwerk. Hookshot also has a very limited radius of effect, making it hard to latch onto enemy heroes that are actively trying to juke you. But once you master these skills, Clockwerk becomes much deadlier. Flares can push creep lanes from the other side of the map and snipe fleeing enemy heroes in the dark (or simply to deny an enemy's Healing Salve or Clarity during early laning), while Hookshot can travel across more than a screen to latch enemy heroes who think they're safe, use Power Cogs to lock them in, and activate Battery Assault to deal damage over time.
• Double-Edged Buff: When Jet Pack is active, Clockwerk can see and fly over terrain with increased movement speed, but turns slower and cannot attack.
• Dynamic Entry: Because Hookshot has such a massive range (well beyond visual range at all levels), Clockwerk can use it to latch onto enemy heroes who don't even know that he's in the area ("area" being anywhere within two screens). It gets even more absurd if Lifestealer is hitching a ride, since a hero can suddenly get stunned without warning, and find themselves at melee range with a Battery Assaulting Clockwerk and a very angry Lifestealer, all while being Cogged in.
• Explosive Overclocking: Overclocking heavily improves all four of his abilities for a duration, then slows him to a crawl for 3 seconds when the buff runs out.
• Expressive Mask: His helmet has functional eyebrows.
• Four-Fingered Hands: A trait common to all Keenfolk.
• Gadgeteer Genius: All of his abilities are based on various gadgets built into his armor.
• Glacier Waif: As a Keen, he is much smaller than most heroes, but his primary role is a ganker/initiator and his stats and skills make him very tanky in combat.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Rattletrap's ultimate, Hookshot, pulls him towards enemies or allies, damaging and stunning enemies he connects with (as well as anything hostile along the way).
• Improvised Weapon: Clockwerk's first ability, Battery Assault, overloads the devices he doesn't need, exploding them into enemies' faces. It's a very situational ability though, since the devices explode against random enemies within range, meaning that it does massive damage when chasing a single fleeing enemy hero but can become utterly useless if your target runs through a creep wave.
• Jet Pack: The appropriately-named Jet Pack allows Clockwerk to see and fly over terrain with increased movement speed, but slows his turn rate and prevents him from attacking.
• Kill Sat: The Paraflare Cannon Immortal item, which fires Rocket Flares if equipped, is described as a satellite drifting in low-Clock orbit.
• Lead the Target: Rocket Flare will allow players to snipe people from across the map once they get a feel for how much damage it does, and how fast it travels.
• Lightning Bruiser: On top of having impressive Agility gain, he has above-average movement speed, and Hookshot allows him to instantly close the gap between him and his target, making him extremely mobile. Leans more toward Stone Wall and eventually Fragile Speedster in the late game, due to both his damage and tankiness falling off sharply at various points.
• Mana Burn: Enemies that touch the Power Cogs barrier are shocked, losing both health and mana.
• Meaningful Name: "Rattletrap" refers to a shaky, rattling object, which was particularly appropriate for him back in the original Defense of the Ancient days. It still fits the ramshackle appearance of his armor, and containing the word "trap" is a bonus.
• Odd Name Out: "Rattletrap" isn't exactly a common given name for a Keen. It's a leftover from his DotA character, which was a mechanical goblin.
• Pirate Parrot: Clockwerk's Seadog's Stash set, which heavily resembles a classical pirate, is always accompanied by a mechanical parrot that flies slightly above his shoulder.
• Powered Armor: Much more low-tech than most examples, but it gets the job done.
• Pungeon Master: It's probably easier to list his lines that are not puns, Shout Outs, or snarks.
  Clockwerk (grappling Tinker): "Hook, line and Tinker!"
• Random Number God: Battery Assault's greatest weakness is that it hits random targets nearby. This means that while it is extremely powerful against lone opponents, trying to use it in a crowd will spread the damage and mini-stuns out ineffectually.
• Science Hero
• See the Invisible: With a level 25 talent, Rocket Flare can reveal invisible enemies around the point of impact.
• Shoulder Cannon: Rocket Flare is fired from a device on his left shoulder.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of his death animations is similar to Terminator's death in a vat of molten metal.
  • To The Six Million Dollar Man:
    Clockwerk (respawning): "I'm the six million gold piece man!"
• Suicide Attack: Clockwerk is often played as a suicide initiator, using Hookshot to fly straight into the enemy team and Power Cogs to disrupt their positioning and let his allies come in. As a result, he is often focused down and killed quickly, especially in the late game, when he becomes much less durable due to a lack of items since he farms extremely slowly.
• Super Mode: Overclocking gives an upgrade to all four of his abilities: 'Battery Assault' now affects every enemy in its radius, 'Power Cogs' now grants Clockwerk bonus attack speed inside it, he can now fire extra flares per 'Rocket Flare' cast with reduced cooldown, and 'Hookshot' now stuns with a larger radius and duration. Some Explosive Overclocking added in a form of a long slow, however, to balance it out.
• Unwanted Assistance: It is very easy for Clockwerk to accidentally screw his allies over with Power Cogs by either trapping them inside and getting them killed, or deny an easy kill by blocking a melee attacker off from whatever they were wailing on. The ability's flavor text hangs a heavy lampshade on this:
  "One of Clockwerk's inventions of which he is most proud is the power cog - though it is sometimes despised by his allies."

Ish'Kafel, the Dark Seer

"If your enemy is equal, prepare for him. If greater, elude him. If weaker, crush him."

Voiced by: John Patrick Lowrie

In an alternate existence known as the Land Behind the Wall, Ish'Kafel was a famous general and military tactician serving under the god-king Damathryx. With his powerful mind, the Dark Seer would create a strategy to win any fight and defend his home. But as the Great Boundaries War reached its end, his army was overwhelmed by the much more powerful opposition. With no options left, Ish'Kafel performed a desperate maneuver. He led the enemy forces into the maze between his realm's eponymous walls before sealing the walls with a magical explosion that trapped the invading army. Although his plan succeeded and made him a hero to his people, Dark Seer was transported to our world, with no way to return home. But even when lost in a strange land, the Dark Seer is still proud of his brilliant intellect and continues develop new combat strategies to prove himself a superior tactician to any in this world.

The Dark Seer is a spellcaster who excels at controlling teamfights. His signature ability is Vacuum: by manipulating gravity, enemies in a circular area are damaged and sucked towards a point. This ability synergizes well with other area-of-effect spells, as they will be able to hit all enemies once they're clumped up. Dark Seer's second spell, Ion Shell, creates a bubble of energy around a unit: enemies who stand near that unit will be continuously zapped and damaged. Surge increases an ally's movement speed, allows them to walk through units, and makes them immune to slows, which is useful for both chasing and escaping. Dark Seer's ultimate ability is Wall of Replica. This powerful teamfight spell creates a long barrier of energy: any enemy that crosses it will be slowed, and more importantly have an illusory copy of themselves summoned. These illusions deal a large amount of damage, meaning that unlike most other illusions, each of them is a serious threat on its own. Thanks to its long duration, Wall of Replica is a great spell for controlling space in fights. With these abilities in his arsenal, the Dark Seer can devise a plan to win any fight.

In Artifact, Dark Seer is a green hero. He has the Active Ability Surge, which lets him move an ally to another lane, and the signature card Ion Shell, which modifies a unit with +3 Retaliate.

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• Always Accurate Attack: Normal Punch causes Dark Seer's next attack on a hero to have True Strike.
• Another Dimension: The Land Behind The Wall.
• Badass Bookworm: His base Strength and Strength growth are quite above average, as is his base armor, making him surprisingly durable for an utility hero. One of the other interesting quirks is that as he's a melee hero, he can actually take advantage of damage block items effectively, meaning that building Crimson Guard on him is viable (and even encouraged, since Soul Ring is often one of his first-built items to bolster his mana pool).
• Bare-Fisted Monk: He attacks with bare fists, and is mostly valued for the massive utility provided by his kit, but can also get an Aghanim's Scepter to unlock Normal Punch if he wishes to improve his right-click attack.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Being from another dimension he is quite alien in appearance. Most notably his sharply pointed head (which he seems to take great pride in), as well as "points" jutting out from his back.
  Dark Seer (gaining a level): "Did my head just get pointier?"
• Charged Attack: The stun duration, knockback and bonus damage of Normal Punch scales with how far Dark Seer has moved in the past 3 seconds.
• Corralling Vacuum: Vacuum is mostly valued for how it can forcibly group enemies tightly together, in the process serving as a setup for teammates' other AoE abilities, including Dark Seer's own Wall of Replica.
• The Dark Arts: He's a master of them.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Since he relies on his melee attacks to do damage, he has very little damage output outside of Ion Shell, giving him little ability to directly kill enemy heroes. However, his skill set allows him to manipulate the battlefield in such a way that makes things difficult for his enemies. In the patches where he's relevant, he's often one of the first picked or first banned heroes in competitive play due to his ability to change the tide of a teamfight by himself.
• Four-Star Badass: He was a general of his people.
• Glacier Waif: Dark Seer is one of the smallest heroes in the game, but he has above-average Strength and Strength growth, and very good base armor (and due to being melee, building damage block items on him is viable).
• Glass Cannon: Wall of Replica illusions deal roughly as much damage as the hero they're based on but take twice as much. The flip side, though, is that as long as the wall is standing the enemy stands the danger of crossing it after killing an illusion and creating another one to deal with.
• Glowing Eyes
• God-Emperor: The God-King Damathryx, whom Ish'Kafel used to work for.
• Gravity Master: Vacuum works by modifying the centre of gravity to a place of Ish'Kafel's choosing.
• Gravity Sucks: Vacuum sucks all enemies in an area to its centre.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He saved his people by trapping himself along with his enemy on "the other side of the wall".
• Humanoid Aliens: He comes from another dimension, and has a human-like bodyplan, but differs in his small size, purple skin, pointed head and hooves.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: Played for Laughs. He finds the roundness of the human head repulsive.
• The Maze: Mentioned in his backstory.
• Money Multiplier: A maxed Ion Shell can do a total of 2250 damage over its 20-second duration. While no hero is dumb enough to stand next to an Ion Shell for 20 seconds, the same thing can't be said of creeps, giving Dark Seer the ability to quickly clear lane and jungle creeps alike and farm extremely fast.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Originally, Dark Seer's Vacuum used to be able to pull invulnerable heroes which back then, was used in tandem with Naga Siren's Song of the Siren where after the heroes are put to sleep by Naga's song, Dark Seer would vacuum them before another hero would use their team-fight ultimate (such as Tidehunter's Ravage or Enigma's Black Hole) for an easy team wipe of the whole opposition. In fact this tactic is so effective, it allowed the team with such combination to steamroll through the whole tournament. Come 6.75, Dark Seer's Vacuum can no longer pull invulnerable units, completely neutering this combination from the game.
• Power Glows: His hands and most of his spells.
• Psychic Powers: All of Dark Seer's abilities rely on mind manipulation.
• Purple Is Powerful: His main colour scheme is violet, and he was a well-known military tactician back in his homeworld.
• Running Gag: The string of patches between 6.75 to 6.79 saw the cooldown for Vacuum being increased by a few seconds each cycle, leading it to become a saying that unless Vacuum's cooldown was nerfed, then the patch was fake. Come 6.82, what changes did Dark Seer get?
  Vacuum cooldown rescaled from 28.0 seconds to 28 seconds
• Spam Attack: Surge has a very low mana cost and short cooldown, allowing Dark Seer to spam it to get around the map. Similarly, Ion Shell has a short cooldown, allowing it to be used constantly on creep waves.
• The Strategist: Was once a master tactician on his homeworld. He even has the whole Chinese Strategist/Sun Tzu theme with his accent, responses, beard of profound strategic wisdom, and being from a "land behind a wall" ruled by a god-like emperor.
• Stone Wall: Because of his skillset providing innate damage and escape, he tends to go for tanky and teamfight utility items, such as Mekansm, Pipe of Insight, and Shiva's Guard. Of course, with his utility-oriented skillset, he has very little direct damage output.
• Super-Speed: Surge temporarily boosts an ally's speed. With level 25 talent, he can AoE cast it.
• Support Party Member: Dark Seer has one of the lowest damage outputs in the game: his right-click is extremely weak (although funnily, he has a +120 damage talent), Vacuum deals almost no damage, while Ion Shell is very unreliable against heroes. However, his kit offers so much utility and versatility that he's valuable in almost any situation possible.
• Twin Maker: Normal Punch knocks an illusion out of a hero attacked by Dark Seer, and Wall of Replica creates an illusion of any enemy hero walking through it, while dealing a small amount of damage. While it can only create one illusion at a time and the illusions are easily destroyed, they do nearly full damage, and dropping it in the middle of a teamfight ensures that they're forced to focus on your teammates instead of the illusions. Even better, the wall will create another illusion if an enemy hero walks into it again after destroying the last one, essentially becoming a hazard zone that the enemy team cannot pass through easily.
• Walking Wasteland: Ion Shell, which deals damage over time to enemy units in an area around a unit, temporarily turns it into this. While it rarely gets kills on its own unless slapped onto a high-mobility ally, the high damage it deals in the early game makes it great for deterring melee opponents from trying to last-hit.
• Wizard Beard: Though it's more intended to be a Sun Tzu beard.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Ish'Kafel is trapped in this world, unable to return to his home.

Mireska Sunbreeze, the Dark Willow

Jex... are you ready for shenanigans?

Voiced by: Ashly Burch

Contrary to what children's stories tell, fairies are spiteful, selfish, cruel, and cutthroat beings. But even by fae standards, Mireska Sunbreeze, the daughter of a merchant king, is a vile individual. In her home nation of Revtel, backstabbing is commonplace in both the figurative and literal sense. But despite the constant treachery surrounding her and her skills at maneuvering through it, she couldn't help but feel bored with her life. After burning her estate to the ground, she fled into the wild in search of excitement and swindling, with only her pet wisp Jex by her side.

Dark Willow is a hero who seeks to use powerful area of effect spells to dictate exactly where enemies can and cannot go if they want to remain unmolested in a teamfight. First of all, Bramble Maze places a rune over a large area that, after a delay, produces 8 clusters of deadly brambles in a fixed pattern. The first enemy to walk into each cluster is rooted and takes damage over time. Shadow Realm has Dark Willow fade herself into the shadows, becoming completely untargetable. While this is active, her next basic attack has increased range, deals bonus damage based on how long she has remained in the shadows, and instantly ends the effect. Her third skill, Cursed Crown is a very unique ability that has Dark Willow place a curse on a targeted enemy that initially does nothing at all. However, after four seconds the curse explodes, stunning the target and all enemies around them for a long duration. Unusually, Dark Willow possesses not one, but two ultimate abilities. While they do not share a cooldown, neither can be used while the other skill is active. The first, Bedlam, releases her pet wisp, Jex, to temporarily patrol around Willow and rapidly attack nearby enemies. The other, Terrorize, instead has her lob Jax at an area. After a short delay, Jex releases a wave of fear around them, sending all enemies in the area uncontrollably scurrying back in the direction of their fountain.

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• Black Mage: All of Dark Willow's abilities are offensive to some degree.
• Blood Knight: Dark Willow loves getting into fights for the thrill of it.
  Dark Willow: (beginning of game) I don't need a horn to tell me when to fight!
• Delayed Explosion: Cursed Crown has a delay of 4 seconds before it explodes, stunning all enemies in the area around the victim.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While she loves to fight, she denies being a sadist.
• The Fair Folk: Most fairies tend to be spiteful jerks, and this is especially true for Mireska. Her green clothing and accent also evoke the image of a leprechaun.
• Fighting Irish: Mireska has a heavy Gaelic accent, and she's a Thrill Seeker fond of battle. She's also fond of drinking.
• Glass Cannon: Shadow Realm and Bedlam deal tremendous amounts of magic damage (think Dagon on top of Witch Doctor's Death Ward), allowing Mireska to utterly eviscerate any lone enemies that she comes across, and she also comes packing strong crowd control; however, her own durability and mobility are limited, and Shadow Realm only does so much.
• Green Thumb: Bramble Maze creates a maze of thorns to root any enemy that comes inside.
• Luke Nounverber: Her last name, Sunbreeze, fits the "Noun-noun" variation of this trope.
• More Dakka: One of Dark Willow's level 25 talents gave her a whopping +200 attack speed. It got more than a bit terrifying when she received an Aghanim's Scepter upgrade to Shadow Realm that applies its damage bonus on every attack while active, letting her burst down enemies so efficiently that the AS talent, the ability itself, and Dark Willow's base attack time were all nerfed.
• Non-Standard Skill Learning: Unlike most heroes, Dark Willow has two ultimates Bedlam and Terrorize, which are levelled at the same time and cannot be simultaneously active.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently, Mireska's had a bad run-in with Tidehunter sometime in the past; this being Tidehunter, Kunkka was also somehow involved, and the encounter ended with Kunkka out for Mireska's blood.
• No-Sell: Using Shadow Realm turns Dark Willow temporarily untargetable until she attacks (unless she has Aghanim's Scepter).
• Plant Person: The back of her head appears to be a flower bud, with petals forming her Boyish Short Hair.
• Purple Is Powerful: The primary colour scheme of Dark Willow is purple.
• Rebellious Princess: A rather extreme case. Not only did she reject her place as a princess, she set fire to the palace before running away.
• Right-Hand Attack Dog: Mireska's pet Jex, which she can use to attack enemies with Bedlam or force them to run towards the fountain with Terrorize.
• Spell Blade: Using Shadow Realm boosts the range and damage of Dark Willow's next right-click attack. Aghanim's Scepter instead causes it to boost the damage of all her attacks while it's active, and no longer causes attacking to end the ability prematurely.
• Status Infliction Attack: Dark Willow comes with no fewer than three different disables: Bramble Maze applies root, Cursed Crown is a stun, and Terrorize utilises a fear effect.
• Sticky Fingers: If she wants something, Mireska doesn't let a little thing like it being someone else's property stop her from getting it. Several of her lines for killing enemies have her threatening to take their stuff, such as Earthshaker's totem and Magnus's horn.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: Terrorize causes all targets to be scared, forcing them to run towards the fountain.
• Thrill Seeker: The reason she burned her home down and ran away? She was bored out of her mind, and even the constant backstabbing around her wasn't thrilling enough to help.
• Tomboy: Not very girly at all, what with her love of fighting and drinking.
• The Trickster: A decidedly more malevolent one than most, but this is her overall attitude.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: One of the community's biggest running jokes about Dark Willow is what exactly her accent is supposed to be, since it's ostensibly Gaelic but seems to meander between Scotland and Ireland on a whim; some even interpret the accent as Polish. Granted, it's not like a fairy from a fantasy world would be expected to have a particularly recognizable accent to begin with.
• Winged Humanoid: She looks like a girl with four extra butterfly wings.

Dazzle, the Shadow Priest

" In the Nothl realm, brightness is dark, and the touch that heals a friend will fell a foe."

Voiced by: David Scully (original), Darin De Paul (Underlords)

As the youngest ever acolyte of the Dezun order, Dazzle had only one test left to complete in order to become a full-fledged Shadow Priest: the rite of shades. This ritual transported one's soul to the Nothl realm, a capricious and dangerous domain where light and darkness are inverted. Few come back from the journey, and those that do return as changed individuals. Despite their objections, Dazzle eventually convinced the elders to let him down the sacred potion that would transport his spirit to the Nothl realm. There, Dazzle bore witness to the true nature of the Dezun order's brilliant healing light, which in the Nothl realm was a wicked and destructive darkness. Enlightened by his experience, Dazzle successfully returned from the Nothl realm with the greatest powers of any Shadow Priest that his clan had ever seen, powers he uses to both heal and destroy.

Dazzle is a hero who comes to his allies' defense, keeping them alive with powerful healing and enchantments, while simultaneously sowing chaos among enemies. His first spell is Poison Touch: this ability splashes poison on and around a targeted enemy, slowing them and inflicting damage over time. This effect can stack with itself, and whenever a target is attacked while under this effect, the debuff duration is refreshed. His next ability is his signature move, Shallow Grave: for 5 seconds, the targeted ally's health cannot go below 1, making them practically invincible for its duration. This powerful spell can single-handedly change the tide of a fight when used properly, as it can buy a carry hero a few more precious seconds to deal their damage. Shadow Wave is his third skill, which fires a bouncing bolt of energy through allies, healing them while dealing damage to enemies around them. When used on clumped-up allies surrounding an enemy, the damage can be quite powerful. Dazzle's ultimate, Bad Juju, has two components - it passively increases the armor of allies and reduces the armor of enemies affected by Dazzle's spells, and can be activated to sacrifice some of Dazzle's health to reduce his spell and item cooldowns, increasing in cost each time it is used in succession. This kit allows Dazzle to keep allies going through any adversity while dooming enemies to a messy end.

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• Adaptation Species Change: Was a troll in DotA, but now can only be described as "the same species as Huskar". Implied to still be some form of troll however, due to comparisons with Troll Warlord.
• Art Evolution: Dazzle's outfit was updated in November 2013 to cover him up more and give him a full headdress.
• Bash Brothers: With Huskar, should they be on the same team. Not only are they brothers in-lore, but Dazzle's skills greatly compliment Huskar's playstyle: Shallow Grave can keep him alive at 1 HP, which Huskar likes since he gains more attack speed the lower his health is, Shadow Wave keeps him healed up, and Bad Juju lets him poke people apart even faster.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Dazzle is one of the friendlier heroes out there, with supportive and defensive spells meant for protecting his team, and he is more than happy to heal his allies should they need it. His spells are also deceptively lethal to his enemies, as Bad Juju applies stacking armor shred to his enemies as he casts spells, and Shadow Wave can easily take off a huge chunk of an enemy's health in the right conditions.
• Cast from Hit Points: Bad Juju costs health to activate, temporarily increasing in health cost on subsequent uses.
• Combat Medic: Shadow Wave heals a number of friendly units near the target, and deals damage in an area around them.
• Combination Attack: Bad Juju is ridiculously good when partnered with right-click damage dealers. In addition, Dazzle can combo with himself, as both of his offensive spells deal physical damage instead of magical damage.
• Cooldown Manipulation: Bad Juju reduces the cooldowns of all of Dazzle's abilities when cast.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Bad Juju passively causes enemies affected by Dazzle's spells to lose armor. It also reduces the cooldown of Dazzle's spells, meaning that you don't want to stand next to him for too long.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Shadow Priests' Order is stated to use magic mainly for healing and self-defense.
• Deadly Doctor: The Dezun Order teaches very few attack spells, and even these are designed to disable the enemy. Dazzle however can invert their properties thanks to his unique gift.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Shallow Grave can be a very powerful spell when used correctly, but using it well is much easier said than done. Holding it for too long or being too far away can result in an ally dying before Dazzle can save them, but casting it too early can result in the spell being wasted (and potentially the ally dying anyway). Leveling up Shallow Grave allows Dazzle to cast it more often and from longer range, giving him more room for error, but the effect remains the same, and taking it early on results in Dazzle's other spells being less effective.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: Gained great powers over light and shadow following his experience in the Nothl realm.
• Forced Transformation: With Aghanim's Shard, Poison Touch briefly hexes enemies on contact.
• Goofy Print Underwear: He is actually wearing pink underwear with a heart◊ under his clothes.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Inverted and played straight with Shadow Wave. Since each allied unit healed can inflict up to 140 Physical damage in an area around themselves when hit with the spell, the damage can be applied multiple times, meaning that if Dazzle and 8 friendly units are standing next to an enemy, that enemy can potentially take up to 980 Physical damage from a single cast (1400 with the appropriate talent and further increased to 1700 with Aghanim's Scepter), before even factoring in Bad Juju. And since it's an AoE spell, this damage can potentially be applied to multiple enemies, every 4 seconds.
• Jack of All Stats: While traditionally a support hero, later buffs to his kit have made Dazzle into a perfectly viable core, as he can harass and lane well in mid and his damage scales decently with items due to his Aghanim's Scepter upgrade and Bad Juju as well as being a Universal hero.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Shallow Grave places a 5 second buff on an ally that prevents their HP from going below 1. The only thing that can kill a target affected by Shallow Grave is Axe's Culling Blade.
• Light Is Not Good: As mentioned in his Dota 2 Back Story, his light has inverted properties.
• Mage Marksman: His starting damage is quite high for a support hero, and all his spells deal Physical damage, meaning magic resistance or spell immunity don't protect against it. Properly geared, he can easily shred enemy armor down into negative levels and thus increases his overall damage. Combined with his great attack animation, high base damage and lack of a primary attribute (being a Universal hero), he's a viable mid hero and can even carry with the right team/items.
• Magic Staff: Dazzle’s weapon is a pink staff with rings that he uses to cast his spells and fling bolts of shadow energy at his enemies.
• Mercy Kill: A hero under Dazzle's Poison Touch debuff can be denied if the target falls below 25% HP so if the victim is cornered with no way to dispelling the debuff, the ally can kill them to prevent Dazzle from obtaining the gold and experience that he would have gotten.
• Mutual Disadvantage: Against Axe. On one hand, Axe is the only hero in the game that can forcibly ignore Dazzle's Shallow Grave with his ultimate Culling Blade, and as a Squishy Wizard, Dazzle does not enjoy being caught by Berserker's Call and Counter Helix. On the other hand, Dazzle can crush Axe in the lane, and Axe is very susceptible to Shadow Wave because of his playstyle, which involves blinking or rushing into a group of enemies and pin them down with Berserker's Call - the perfect opportunity for a Shadow Wave. Bad Juju also hurts Axe hard, as it reduces his armor, which really hurts his tankiness. In a game with both Axe and Dazzle, Axe can't aggro out a lane and Dazzle has to juggle more variables in mid-late game team fights. Axe has to jungle or even safe/mid and starts being a bully much later then he would like to. However if Axe safely jungles a Blink Dagger then it's tough for Dazzle, so he doesn't straight up win because his kit becomes slightly diminished in that scenario for nought. A well played Axe can make Dazzle useless and a well played Dazzle can really make Axe cry.
• Nice Guy: Dazzle's one of the most amiable heroes in the game, and is all too happy to share his healing magic with allies.
• Pinball Projectile: Shadow Wave bounces off allies, healing them while dealing damage to nearby enemies. Aghanim's Scepter also allows it to bounce off enemies, dealing damage to them while healing nearby allies
• Poisonous Person: With Poison Touch, which paralyses enemies, damaging and slowing them. It also refreshes its duration every time the target gets hit by a player-based attack, meaning it can deal a surprising amount of damage and make it very hard to run away from Dazzle.
• The Red Mage: Dazzle is both capable of keeping his allies and himself from dying, causing his foes to waste time in a fruitless endeavour, as well as delivering a huge damage output with Shadow Wave and Bad Juju when good positioning comes to play. His Aghanim's Scepter upgrade allows Shadow Wave to bounce onto enemies for increased healing and damage while also firing a basic attack at them, making him even more dangerous while giving his frontline allies even more healing. Add that to him being a Universal hero, meaning he gets a lot of attack damage from attribute bonuses, and a farmed Dazzle is not someone you want as an enemy.
• Run or Die: Bad Juju's armor reduction stacks indefinitely; if you can't kill Dazzle quickly in a fight or stop him from casting spells, you will get ripped to shreds. Poison Touch can also lead to this as it refreshes every time Dazzle attacks an enemy marked with it; if they can't get away from him with an ability, an item, or juking, they will get chipped to death.
• Slasher Smile: His face paint makes it seem as though he is always grinning.
• Squishy Wizard: Despite his ability to keep his teammates alive, Dazzle himself can be very easy to kill, especially if he can't cast Shallow Grave.
• Tribal Face Paint: His facepaint looks like a smiling skull.
• Voodoo Doll: The Nothlic Burden Immortal item comes with a doll of Axe, Dazzle's most notable counter.
• Why Won't You Die?: While Dazzle himself is quite squishy, he, like Omniknight, can use his abilities to make (at least one member of) his team extremely difficult to kill by spamming out Shadow Wave and Shallow Grave.

Enigma

"If light cannot escape me, what hope have you?"

Voiced by: Jon St. John

Enigma is just as mysterious as his name implies, with countless theories as to his past and identity. Some say he was once an alchemist punished for hubris as he attempted to unlock the secrets of the universe, others claim that he is the primordial abyss personified, and the oldest legends claim that he is the sentient remains of the first dying star. What is known, however, is that he wields all the power of a Fundamental - a cosmic force capable of consuming entire worlds.

Enigma is a strong initiator and a highly efficient jungler, letting him quickly collect the items he needs to unleash havoc on the enemy. Malefice holds Enigma's enemies down by repeatedly disabling the target; once every couple of seconds, the victim will be damaged and stunned. Demonic Summoning will conjure three Eidolons under Enigma's control. Eidolons will split after attacking six times, returning to full health after doing so. Midnight Pulse steeps an area in dark energy, destroying all trees in the area and damaging enemies for a percentage of their maximum health every second. Enigma boasts one of the most powerful initiation abilities in the game in his ultimate ability, Black Hole. When the ability is cast, Enigma will channel a vortex that sucks in all hapless enemies within its range, disabling them with its gravitational pull; once caught, there are very few ways for an enemy to escape. Although its long cooldown means that Enigma will have to use it judiciously, a well-timed Black Hole will crush the enemy into oblivion, giving them no chance to fight back.

In Dota Underlords, Enigma is the Ace of Primordials, causing Eidolons to cast Malefice when killed, periodically mini-stunning their killer. His ability, Midnight Pulse, creates a pool of dark energy, continuously draining a portion of enemies' health while they stand in it.

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• Achilles' Heel: Amongst heroes with big teamfight ultimates such as Magnus and Tidehunter, Enigma is the most vulnerable to Rubick. Since Black Hole has to be channelled, if Enigma can't catch Rubick in its small area of effect, Spell Steal is guaranteed to give him Black Hole - enough to turn the tides of the fight. This is augmented by the fact that Spell Steal can pierce spell immunity, meaning that even if Enigma activates BKB or Glimmer Cape (which in the case of the latter is still vulnerable to detection), Rubick can still steal it in the 4 second channeling time. Similar principles apply for other spell immunity piercing abilities such as Vengeful Spirit's Nether Swap, Beastmaster's Primal Roar, Clockwerk's Hookshot, and so on. In fact, the only real way for Enigma to be completely safe while channeling his ultimate is to catch all enemy heroes who can interrupt him through spell immunity; even if he purchases a Linken's Sphere on top of Black King Bar and/or Glimmer Cape, he can still be interrupted by abilities like Reverse Polarity, Hookshot, and Berserker's Call.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: He is a sentient manifestation of gravitational forces.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Black Hole will disable debuff immune enemies and due to its damage type being Pure, will also damage them, meaning that the only way to dodge it is to become invulnerable.
• Art Evolution: Received a new hero model in 7.00 with a more well-defined figure.
• Batman Gambit: The Summoning comic reveals that Enigma planted fake alchemical journals, under a fake identity, in order to lead power-hungry alchemists into crafting powerful artifacts that he can use.
• Black Mage: Enigma is a purely offensive spellcaster, with none of his abilities having any direct defensive application.
• Cast from Hit Points: Demonic Summoning costs both health and mana to cast.
• Chunky Updraft: He is followed by a trail of rocks and dirt raised from the ground by his gravity. Rocks start orbiting him as a tiny asteroid belt when he's standing still.
• Corralling Vacuum: Black Hole slowly pulls all affected enemies toward its core in addition to stunning them, making it easier for Enigma's teammates to follow up with their own AoE abilities.
• Cyclops: When wearing the Twisted Maelstrom set, Enigma only has a large glowing eye dominating his forehead, instead of two normal eyes.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Black Hole is one of the most fearsome teamfight abilities in the game, disabling the entire enemy team for up to 4 seconds while dealing heavy damage and grouping them up, rendering them even more vulnerable to Enigma's teammates' AoE abilities. It is also very difficult to land as the enemy will rarely group nicely for you given the choice, and being a channelled ability, requires Enigma to catch all enemy heroes or buy Linken's Sphere to prevent disruption.
• Eldritch Abomination: The anthropomorphic personification of gravity and the void, and physically best described as a black hole in human shape.
• Enemy Summoner: Demonic Summoning summons three Eidolons, which are capable of self-replicating on successful attacks.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Black Hole can suck in interface elements like gold and damage indicators.
• Glass Cannon: His Eidolons are less durable than Nature's Prophet's treants or Lycan's Wolves, and slower to boot, but their damage output once there's 6 of them is staggering, and their range makes up for the lack of mobility to some degree.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Enigma and his Eidolons.
• Gravity Is Purple: The enbodiment of gravity itself. Naturally, he gives off a purple aura.
• Gravity Master: Malefice and Black Hole manipulate the gravity to stun enemies.
• Gravity Sucks: Black Hole pulls all affected enemies into its centre.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: In The Summoning comic, Enigma is summoned and apparently trapped in a chalk circle by an alchemist. He spends most of the comic letting the alchemist talk, and trying to trick him into letting him out. Then he reveals he could leave the circle at will anytime he wanted.
  Enigma: Did you really think you could become a god by singing nursery rhymes and making chalk drawings on a floor?
• In the Hood: The Servants of Endless Stars cosmetic Eidolons wear a black face-obscuring hood.
• King Mook: To the Eidolons.
• Meaningful Name
• Me's a Crowd: Enigma's Eidolons are actually aspects of himself from other dimensions.
• Mysterious Past: As befitting of his name.
• Percent Damage Attack: Midnight Pulse, which deals damage based on a percentage of their current HP. Anyone stupid enough to stand in it for the whole duration will lose almost half their health. An upgraded Black Hole deals 5% of their max HP per second which stacks with Midnight Pulse. Using both at once can whittle their HP down a fraction of their max HP Enigma can use a Refresher Orb to reset the cooldown and do it again.
• Power of the Void
• Purple Is the New Black: He is a living black hole that is purple instead of black for some reason.
• Self-Duplication: Enigma's Eidolons are able to multiply and fully heal themselves after 6 successful attacks.
• Sentient Cosmic Force: He is actually one of the Fundamentals, the sentient manifestations of the four fundamental forces of the universe.
  Enigma, on a team with Io, Chaos Knight and Keeper of the Light: "The four pillars stand together once more."
• Summon Magic: Demonic Summoning summons three Eidolons, aspects of Enigma from other dimensions.
• Time Abyss: As a Fundamental, he's literally as old as creation.
• Too Awesome to Use: Black Hole has one of the longest cooldowns in the game (with only a few level 1 ultimate abilities tying, which gain shorter cooldowns when leveled up). This means that Enigma players will frequently be forced to die without casting their Black Hole because they need it for a major teamfight. It isn't uncommon for an Enigma to build single-target disable items just so that they have an option outside of Malefice.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: Enigma's Black Hole hovers above the ground, sucking in every enemy (but not allies or terrain) in a very small area until it disappears or Enigma stops channelling.

Carl, the Invoker

"So begins a new age of knowledge."

Voiced by: Dennis Bateman (original), Jack Fisher (Acolyte of the Lost Arts persona)

In its earliest days, the magical arts required not wands, but great amounts of memorization: each spell had its own unique and complex formula needed to cast it, and as a result it was rare for a single magician back then to know more than three or four incantations, with most settling for two or even one. It is hard to imagine then that one person, the Invoker, had the sheer intellect to memorize at least ten different spells, each of which he can cast without much effort. In fact, he has learned many more invocations during his life, which he willingly allows himself to forget in order to save his brainpower for only the best spells. One such spell, the Sempiternal Cantrap, which grants its caster near-eternal life. As a result of this spell, the Invoker has been around for centuries, but unlike most of its users, he proudly flaunts his longevity openly. After all, a genius of his caliber fears no one.

The Invoker is an unorthodox Universal hero, generally played as a midlane carry and initiator. The abilities he learns by leveling up are simple reagents, manifesting as orbs which grant him control over one of three elements and provide bonuses while active. Invoker can have up to three orbs active at any one time, and activating one reagent adds an orb of that reagent (replacing the oldest if he already has three). Quas grants manipulation of ice and spell lifesteal, Wex allows manipulation of electricity and grants bonus movement speed and cooldown reduction, and Exort gives access to fire and increases spell damage. Invoker's true potential, however, lies in his ultimate ability, which allows him to Invoke one of ten spells based on the active reagents. These spells are not leveled directly; instead, their power is dependent on the levels of the appropriate reagents. Invoker's arsenal gives him a plethora of options, from debilitating foes with Cold Snap, Tornado and Ice Wall, to pushing lanes with Forge Spirits and Alacrity, to devastating enemy teams with EMP, Chaos Meteor, and Deafening Blast, to picking off fleeing enemies with Sun Strike, on top of making a quick getaway with Ghost Walk. While difficult to learn, he is not to be taken lightly, as the only limits the Arsenal Magus's potential knows are the ones imposed by the player behind the controls.

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• Achilles' Heel: Debuff immunity cancels out most of his arsenal, which is a death sentence for a scaling nuke-based hero who can't simply rely on early game power, then hand the reigns to physical fighters later.
• Adaptation Name Change: In the original DotA, Invoker's name was Kael, which obviously cannot be ported to Dota 2, as it was also the name of a Warcraft character, so he was renamed 'Carl', according to several lines of himself, Undying and Mirana.
• Anime Hair: Two of Invoker's Immortals, the Magus Apex and the second style of the Dark Artistry Hair (which is implicitly based on the Magus Apex), are big manes of spiky, blond, glowing, gravity-defying hair.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The game allows you to pull up a list of his spells and their Invoke combinations for a refresher in the middle of a game, to help players learn his abilities.
  • When Invoking a new spell, the oldest one in his loadout is replaced. However, the game allows you to Invoke the spell in the older slot to swap the positions of his two active spells, in case you want to keep that one. Doing so does not put Invoke on cooldown.
• The Arch Mage: When it comes to the sheer variety of spells known, the Invoker is unmatched, having access to over ten spells when most other magi barely reach four.
• Ascended Meme: His name, Carl, comes from a Google Translate of a "leaked" changelog. The original Invoker was named 'Kael', after a Warcraft character. When a fake Chinese changelog was posted on the PlayDota forums, it was Google Translated, and "Kael" was translated as "Carl". In Dota 2, where the name Kael cannot be reused for legal issues, Invoker is renamed to 'Carl', according to several lines of himself, Undying and Mirana.
  Icefrog, commenting on the Invoker "nerf": Carl had it coming.
  Invoker: Behold before you, the illustrious, the imperious, ingenious archmage… CARL.
  Undying: Carl? Is that you?
• Badass Bookworm: Invoker is a genius and has the second highest intelligence growth, and it is generally a bad idea to underestimate him in combat.
• Badass Long Robe
• Beam Spam: With Aghanim's Scepter, Invoker can use Cataclysm to cause 2 Sun Strikes to fall randomly near each enemy hero (after the normal delay). In a big teamfight, this can get messy quickly as the enemy heroes try to dodge all the 10 Sun Strikes that are about to fall on their heads and potentially even get instantly blown up by multiple overlapping ones.
• Black Mage: Except for Ghost Walk and Alacrity, 8 out of Invoker's 10 spells are offensive to some degree, and even then, Alacrity is an offensive buff.
• Boring, but Practical: Being able to cast Cataclysm with Aghanim's Scepter is well and good, but the bonus stats to all his spells is just as much of an incentive for Invoker to grab a Scepter because Invoker is all about scaling his spells into the late-game.
• Calling Your Attacks: In three different ways, no less. He can call out the spell's name, call the spell's Invoke combination, or use the spell's proper lore name (listed as Flavor Text on the spells themselves). For instance, Sun Strike can be called out as any of the following:
  "Sun Strike!"
  "Exort Trionis!"
  "Harlek's Incantation of Incineration!"
• Canis Latinicus: Some of the responses for his spells.
• Casting a Shadow: The Dark Artistry set adds a purplish shadow tint to Invoker's Tornado and Deafening Blast.
• Child Prodigy: The "Acolyte of the Lost Arts" hero persona turns Carl into a younger version of himself. He's just as powerful and talented as the adult version. In the lore, it's said that he was the star pupil at his academy.
• Colony Drop: Chaos Meteor pulls an asteroid from orbit and throws it at the target point, where it will roll and deal damage to anything in its path. It rolls farther the more Wex levels you have, and deals more damage the more Exort levels you have.
• Combos: Invoker play revolves around mostly using two effective skills in a combo since Invoke's cooldown is too long early on to do much more other than for special emergencies. Using Deafening Blast to keep enemies in the area of Chaos Meteor to inflict serious damage, Tornado to prevent enemies from escaping the area of EMP before it detonates, and using Forge Spirits to trigger Cold Snaps lock down and capitalize on it with physical damage are the three primary combos, each primarily focusing on two reagents.
• Confusion Fu: Invoker has three "reagents", which grant stat bonuses as well as minor spell lifesteal, movement speed and cooldown reduction, or spell damage bonuses when active; and Invoke, which gives Invoker a spell based on which reagents are active at the time. Since there are ten possible combinations and the effects include summoning, buffing, disabling, creating temporary walls, four different attack spells (one with unlimited range), and turning invisible, it's very difficult to tell what an Invoker will do next. Since Invoker is limited to having two spells ready at a time, it also makes him Difficult, but Awesome.
• Cooldown Manipulation: Each instance of Wex reduces the cooldown of Invoker's spells.
• Crosshair Aware: When Invoker uses Cataclysm, each Sun Strike is fully audible and visible to the enemy (as opposed to the normal Sun Strike, which can only be seen and heard by his team), which, combined with the spell's standard delay, provides the enemy with enough time to get the hell away if not prevented from doing so by a disable.
• Death from Above: Chaos Meteor and Sun Strike. The latter is a beam that can be fired anywhere on the map that can be upgraded into Cataclysm, which casts extra 2 Sun Strike around all heroes.
• Delayed Explosion: EMP takes some seconds after casting to activate. Because of this, a good setup skill, usually Tornado, is essential for Invoker to land a good EMP.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Widely considered to have the most complex skill set in the game (though not the hardest character to actually use, as that title goes to Meepo). Not only does casting his spells require good memory of which reagents are required for each spell, the amount that each reagent is leveled drastically affects how powerful each spell is. For instance, Deafening Blast, which requires one of each reagent, can affect the enemy completely differently depending on how much you've leveled each reagent, since each one controls a completely different variable, so it can either do only damage, only stun, or only disarm the enemy, or anything inbetween. This makes it hard to use Invoker effectively if you don't level the proper reagents for maxing out the power of specific spells for specific builds or situations. But once you get it down, Invoker is easily the most flexible caster in the game (with even Rubick coming in second), capable of queuing up whatever spell is required at will, casting it, and quickly Invoking another spell to cast while the others are on cooldown. A good Invoker who has enough mana and Octarine Core can potentially cast one spell every two seconds (barring the cooldown of each individual spell stopping him). That being said, his actual combos aren't very difficult to land, especially when compared to abilities such as Mirana's Sacred Arrow. Most of them just consist of shooting two skills right after each other at the same location, such as his bread-and-butter combos of each build. The difficulty lies in memorizing the combinations for the spells and being able to reliably Invoke them while under pressure from the enemy, and to maximize his output he also needs to have the right orbs ready at the right time when casting his spells.
  • Sun Strike is this, amongst Invoker's spells. It deals spread out damage over a small area and has a long delay, forcing players to predict their victim's movement and assure that no creep wave will come to shield him. But good Sun Strikes can be used to snipe enemies from pretty much everywhere on the map, even near the fountain where they think they're safe.
• Double-Edged Buff: Ghost Walk turns Invoker invisible and boosts health and mana regeneration, but also slows him down until he gets 4 levels in Wex.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first version of Invoker had a whopping 27 spells, and the order of the reagents mattered for Invoke. This was ultimately scrapped for being a nightmare to learn, play, code, and balance, and Invoker was removed from the game entirely for a time before being reintroduced with his current 10 spells.
• Elemental Powers: He is perhaps the most glorious user of such powers; manipulation of each element grants certain spell powers and a temporary buff to a related skill.
  • Quas provides extra HP regen while active, and increases the duration and intensity of the debuffs of his spells.
  • Wex (a combination of Shock and Awe and Blow You Away) grants extra attack and movement speed while active, and buffs his spells' range or area of effect.
  • Exort increases attack damage while active, and Exort-based spells tend to focus on raw damage.
• EMP: The name of one of his abilities, which deals damage, burns mana and returns part of that mana to Invoker.
• Fast as Lightning: Having Wex reagents active, which are associated with lightning, grants increased movement speed and lower spell cooldowns.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The basic reagents of his spells are Quas (Ice), Wex (Storm), and Exort (Fire).
• Flaming Meteor: Chaos Meteor deal damage-over-time when a foe touches the meteor. The distance of the meteor and the damage is based on his current power of Wex and Exort, respectively. It takes time for the meteor to land and move, so synergy with his other skills is necessary for maximum damage.
• Flowery Elizabethan English: When he's not speaking in Canis Latinicus.
• Foil: To Rubick, both are arguably the most generic mage-type heroes, with no additional theme; Invoker wears white and gold, Rubick dresses in black and green; Invoker's practically a walking mass of ego while Rubick's a Nice Guy; Invoker only uses the 10 spells he has, seeing everything else as beneath him and isn't all that bright, relying on his memory; Rubick on the other hand, is very adaptable and a quick learner, but is also rather forgetful.
• Functional Magic: His ability to cast magic lies in his excellent memory.
• Fun with Acronyms: His responses give creative definitions for EMP such as "Extractive Mana Pulse" "and "Endoleon's Malevolent Perturbation". Quas Wex Exort are more obvious, with the first letters for each being the keyboard hotkeys for those skills.
• Gale-Force Sound: Deafening Blast knocks victims back and temporarily disables their right-click attack.
• Harmless Freezing: While Cold Snap and Ice Wall do deal damage, it's mostly incidental next to the stun and area slow.
• Heal Thyself: Ghost Walk regenerates Invoker's health and mana while active.
• I Have Many Names: Acquired from all the ages he's lived, but his name of power is... CARL.
• Insufferable Genius: Constantly prattles on about his (Supposedly) superior intelligence.
• Invisibility: Ghost Walk turns Invoker invisible immediately (meaning there's no fade time), and slows enemies nearby depending on his Quas levels. While it initially makes him slower as well, he can start moving at normal speed (or even faster) once he has four or more levels of Wex.
• It's All About Me: Basically, to him, there's two kinds of people in the world: Him, and people that aren't him, the latter of which are worthless.
  Invoker: "All that matters, perishes with me."
  Invoker: "The universe depends on what I can remember of it."
• Jack of All Trades: Because of his massive stock of spells, Invoker can be built to fill almost any utility role that his team needs, whether it's Quas-Wex for crowd control, Wex-Exort for pushing and damage output, or Quas-Exort for single-target damage and pickoffs.
• Jerkass: Claims he did all the work after a win, doesn't acknowledge his enemies' existence, and doesn't even bother to learn who's on his side.
• Kill It with Fire: Exort, the reagent associated with fire, gives Invoker bonus spell damage while active. Exort-based spells likewise form the bulk of Invoker's damage output, and leveling Exort tends to increase those spells' raw damage.
• Kill Sat: Sun Strike has a global range and deals Pure damage. Its damage is distributed evenly on all enemies hit, and it has a very small radius, on top of having a 1.7 second strike delay (requiring players to Lead the Target), however it can be used to snipe enemies anywhere on the map, even in their fountain where they think they're safe.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Despite his constant claims of being the smartest, his actual intelligence is unremarkable, largely getting by through memorization — and even that can fail if you mess up the spell combinations. This is ultimately zigzagged: while he is capable of learning other spells, he prefers not to remember them (presumably to make space for his own ego) and he does boast the second highest Intelligence growth in the game, after Pugna, although his base intelligence makes him hard to take seriously.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: Gaster, the wizard who invented the Alacrity spell in-lore, was implied to be one of these by the description of the Magus Accord Immortal item. The spell in question lets Invoker become one as well by giving him a surprising amount of physical damage output.
• Lead the Target: Sun Strike has a delay before inflicting its damage, requiring a good Invoker player to predict where the target will be in the next few seconds.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: His background story leans heavily on Dota 2's metagame; only a few heroes have more than four abilities (Aghanim's Shard and/or Scepter notwithstanding), and even then there's usually at least one passive among them. The ability for any player to use Invoker well depends on their memory of which reagents are required for each spell, as well as their knowledge of how powerful those spells are based on how many levels are in each reagent. Also, his story mentions him learning and then purging from his mind many spells, possibly as a reference to the 27-spell Invoker from the early days of DotA.
• Life Drain: Each instance of Quas grants Invoker a stacking bonus to spell lifesteal.
• Limited Move Arsenal: Invoker can only hold two spells at a time. Leveling up his ultimate shortens its cooldown, but good Invoker play involves being able to juggle all the spells and Invoke what's needed beforehand while removing spells that are on cooldown.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Played straight with Invoker, making it an inversion to how the trope is often played in Dota. He is one of the best scaling nukers in the game: while most nukers start off powerful, peak at level 18 with a level 3 ultimate (and Aghanim's Scepter if applicable) and then start to fall off as their damage stops scaling, Invoker's spells scale with levels of his orbs all the way from level 1 to level 25, making him extremely level-dependent but allowing him to remain useful into the late game.
• Mana Burn: Invoker's EMP ability lays down an electric blast over a massive area that explodes 2.6 seconds after he casts it. Any enemies in the area will have a part of their mana pool destroyed (based on the levels of Wex), and half of that amount converted into damage done to them.
• Mana Drain: Half of the mana destroyed by EMP is given to Invoker.
• Monochromatic Eyes
• Mystical White Hair: The Trials of the Blackguard Magus and Dark Artistry sets come with manes of bleached-white hair. He also appears to have platinum blonde hair in his portrait, giving off this effect, though his in-game model is more of a golden blonde.
• Narcissist: Just to give an idea of how bad he is compared to the other egomaniacs in this game (who also have plenty of "Look at me!" or "I am the best!" lines): Invoker is the only hero to have zero special interactions with other heroes, like greeting an ally, taunting a rival or acknowledging a Worthy Opponent. Nope, he is so self-absorbed he doesn't bother to learn anyone's names, they mean nothing to him. Even in his "Acolyte of the Lost Arts" persona, where he do bother acknowledging certain heroes, his ego is still there.
  Invoker (killing a foe): Whatever THAT was, twas scarcely worth my notice.
• Non-Standard Skill Learning: Unlike any other hero in the game, Invoker cannot directly learn his various spells via leveling up; he must first skill the necessary reagents for the spell, then Invoke (itself an innate ability that is known from level 1 and cannot be put skill points into) them in the correct order to temporarily gain access to that skill.
• Palette Swap: The cosmetic Forged Spirit Sentinel of the Blackguard Magus◊ bears more than a passing resemblance to Ancient Apparition.
• Pet the Dog: If he's healed by an item used by an ally, Invoker still has enough decency to thank them, despite being a Jerkass Narcissist on a very high caliber. Compare with Troll Warlord, who doesn't even thank the healer.
• Planar Shockwave: With one of his level 25 talents, Deafening Blast becomes a massive circular explosion.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: The Magus Apex Immortal hair, which looks much more prominent than Invoker's default hairstyle.
  The Sol Apex Incantation, forgotten for over nine thousand years, promised its caster the chance to touch the sun, bathe in its blinding glory, and harness its most scalding wrath. Only one would dare be so bold.
• The Power of the Sun: Sun Strike focuses the sun's rays into a powerful beam of energy which can be aimed at any point on the map.
• Really 700 Years Old: Due to the Sempiternal Cantrap.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness
• Shoulders of Doom: The rather aptly named cosmetic Heaven-Piercing Pauldrons extend at least half a metre over Invoker's height. Apparently they serve as a reminder that even the depthless celestial realm is vulnerable to being punctured by Invoker's power.
• Shout-Out:
  • His death animation is very similar to timelord regeneration.
  • The Magus Apex Immortal item gives him Super Saiyan hair. Made more obvious by the description, which makes a point of stating that the incantation was forgotten for "over nine thousand years."
• Some Dexterity Required: Managing Invoker's spells early on can be (comparatively) straightforward once you learn which reagents are required for certain spells, since there's still at least a few seconds' cooldown on Invoke, giving you plenty of time to think about what spell you need next. However, since the cooldown of Invoke decreases with each level Invoker has in his orbs, a high-level Invoker can essentially cast spells as quickly as he can press the keys (barring their individual cooldowns), as with all orbs maxed out Invoke has only a 0.7 second cooldown; making the most of this requires the player to press seven keys per second.
• Special Person, Normal Name: His true name of power is Carl.
  Invoker: Throughout the aeons I have been known by many names… but my true name of power… is Carl.
• Squishy Wizard: While Invoker has the second highest Intelligence growth in the game and a very wide array of spells, his Strength and Agility are both fairly lacking. He could counteract this by taking levels in Quas, as it gives him bonus Strength per level.
• Status-Buff Dispel: Tornado can remove buffs similar to Eul's Scepter of Divinity.
• Summon Magic: Forge Spirits summons a minion to fight alongside you. With enough levels in Quas and Exort, Invoker will summon two of them instead of one.
• Super-Speed: Invoker starts out with low base movement speed, but gains bonus movement speed with active Wex orbs. With enough levels of Wex and an active Ghost Walk, Invoker can move quite quite quickly, to say nothing of his recommended item build including various movement speed items like Eul's Scepter and Phase Boots.
• Time Travel: The Acolyte of the Lost Arts hero persona represents a version of Carl who learnt a time travel spell when he was a child, and used it to jump into the future and take the place of the adult Invoker.
• Tornado Move: Tornado throws a tornado at the enemy in a straight line, disabling them for a certain amount of time (based on Invoker's Quas level). It has an absurdly long range if you level Wex enough (well beyond visual range starting at 4 levels).
• Unwanted Assistance: Tornado gives the enemy invincibility for the duration of the spell, and unlike most such effects, hits a large area. Invoker setting up his combo with Tornado can often completely screw up everyone else's combo as they drop their stuns and nukes into the ground while their targets are blown above.
• Wizards Live Longer: Thanks to the Sempiternal Cantrap spell (which Invoker purged from his memories the moment he used it).

Io, the Guardian Wisp

"..."

Io is the Guardian Wisp, a omnipresent Fundamental who embodies the inscrutable forces that bind particles together. It has travelled across countless realities, its physical presence only briefly perceptible on this plane of existence through the manipulation of the natural laws that keep matter together. Although it is a being beyond our understanding, one thing is clear: Io is a force for goodness and cooperation, helping others and strengthening them through its dominion over the cosmic powers that hold the universe together.

"Support" is the watchword for Io the Guardian Wisp. It excels at controlling its lane by keeping its allies healthy and heavily harassing enemies, and is capable of saving allies from near-certain death with its very powerful support kit. The cornerstone of Io's arsenal is Tether, which connects Io and another unit with a spirit tether. The tether increases the movement speed of Io and the tethered ally, and depending on Io's health and mana regeneration rate, the tethered unit receives 1.5x the amount recovered. Finally, any enemy that cross the tether will be slowed. The ability also allows Io to quickly jump to an ally's location when cast from long range, making it a potent escape mechanism as well. Io's second ability summons a ring of five Spirits to dance around it, detonating on contact with heroes and dealing damage in a small area. Io can increase or decrease the ring's radius at will to zone enemies out, provide long-range harassment, or finish off fleeing enemies. With Aghanim's Scepter, Spirits becomes a passive ability; Io will constantly summon Spirits over time to a maximum of five. Io's third ability, Overcharge, greatly increases its attack speed and provides damage resistance when active over 8 seconds. The bonuses are also applied to Tethered allies, allowing Wisp to turn a carry into a real powerhouse in conjunction with the heal from Tether. Its ultimate, Relocate, teleports Io any location on the map for a short time before returning it to the cast location. Io can bring a Tethered ally along for the ride both on cast and on the return trip, opening up the potential for near-impossible ganks and death-defying escapes.

In Dota Underlords, Io is a tier 3 hero. Its ability, Tether, pulls Io to an ally, granting it increased attack speed and damage reduction. It can also use Relocate to warp out of the battlefield for a few seconds, bringing a dead hero back to life with full health alongside it.

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• Awesome, but Impractical: Io is probably the most team-dependent hero in the game, the only way to actually play it is in an organised and coordinated setting, something that is nonexistent in pubs. Because of this, it is absurdly unpopular in pubs, but ranks amongst the top picks in competitive, with a consistently high contest rate (the rate that combines both ban and pick rates) through the years.
• Celestial Body: Is essentially a living star.
• Combat Medic:
  • When Io gains health or mana, a Tethered hero gains 1.5x the amount. With healing items like Urn of Shadows, Bottle or Tranquil Boots, Io can pump an absurd amount of HP and mana into an allied carry in the middle of a teamfight while at the same time nullifying their normal disadvantage of being cancelled when taking damage or attacking, by staying away from the fight while maintaining the tether.
  • Io with an Aghanim's Scepter can actually be quite scary even without teammates, to the point where teams may actually give Io farm priority to assemble the item quickly. With a constant stream of Spirits and the talent to make Spirits slow enemies, the poke damage can very quickly add up in a manfight.
• Company Cross References: Io's 2017 International Arcana turns it into a glowing Companion Cube. The Arcana also replaces some of Io's "voice lines" with fragments of the credits song "Still Alive".
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Wisp (outside of a few comedy builds) is pretty much the only Hero who can do nothing but support other Heroes. It requires heavy teamwork, but is incredibly powerful when utilized correctly. Because of this, Wisp is one of the most commonly picked or banned heroes in professional tournaments.
  • Spirits must be aimed for the precise distance between Wisp and the target. If someone has trouble landing them, then they're a huge waste of mana. If someone is skilled with landing them though, Spirits can be an incredible amount of harassment that you can do from 875 range.
  • Using Relocate to its fullest potential is also very difficult, as you'll always need to keep an eye out for potential ganks, Tether someone and teleport near or onto where you want to gank after a channeling time. However you also have to be wary if other enemies are missing, as they could be baiting you out. However, it is one of the only two skills in the game which can give global presence to any ally (the other being Underlord's Fiend's Gate, whose cooldown is significantly longer). Using Relocate to bring you and your lane partner behind unsuspecting enemies in either your own or another lane globally is a huge deal. This can be used to get your carry fed very quickly if your team is competent and you communicate your intentions. In addition to this, Relocate can be used in a big fight to bring someone to the fight who didn't get there in time, pull someone out who's about to die, or take someone back to heal quickly during the fight. Relocate requires you to be very cognisant of how your team is doing in a fight and what's needed most.
• Dynamic Entry: Relocate, which teleports Io and any tethered hero to any point on the map for a short time, can turn any ally into a global ganking, pushing and counterganking machine.
• Energy Being: Heck, even the in-game model itself is just particle!
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Story wise, Io is among the most powerful heroes. It is a fundamental, exists everywhere at any time, and can extinguish sapient stars without issue. Gameplay wise, outside of its brief stint as a carry during patch 7.22, it is nowhere near as powerful as most other heroes on its own.
• Happy Fun Ball: Often called this thanks to the spherical shape and totally unexpected power in a coordinated team.
  Bastion Announcer: "Hey what's that little glowy ball? Famous last words."
• Heroic Sacrifice: On a lineup with Io, a carry can farm exposed areas with little risk. Any time the enemy would initiate on him, Io can use Relocate, bail him out and sacrifice himself to save the carry. Oftentimes the return of farming an exposed lane and being able to keep farming instead of sitting through a respawn timer was greater than the damage done by feeding Io.
• Nature Spirit
• No Biological Sex: As an Energy Being and a Fundamental to boot, Io has no gender and is referred to as "it".
• Not the Intended Use: Patch 7.22 in 2019 (and its subsequent letter updates until 7.22f, and also the patch where Io was added back in Captain's Mode, the mode used in professional Dota 2) allowed the potential for Io, usually a support to buff up the hard carries, to be played as the hard carry. With the level 10 and 15 talents along with their Aghanim's Scepter upgrade that makes Spirits an insane damage-dealing ability that slows enemies when hit, it allows Io to deal ludicrous amounts of magic damage in the midgame, when most players don't have the items to help survive said damage if it's not rushed (i.e. BKB). After that year's International tournament (where Eurpoean team OG won as the proponent of this sorta meme-ish yet scarily legit strategy used to devastating effect), 7.22g raised up the talents by one tier so that both level 10 and 15 talents were instead at level 15 and 20 respectively, so as to not be the midgame monster that it was, eventually removing the slow from Spirits altogether in 7.23.
• Power Floats: Io visibly levitates above the ground. Considering it is also a fundamental, it also has the power to match.
• The Power of Friendship: Io can't really do much by itself, but just try to fight both it and a carry like Chaos Knight or Tiny at once and see how long you will stand.
• Sentient Cosmic Force: Io is the Fundamental who embodies electromagnetism.
• The Speechless: All the noises he makes can be described as submarine-sounding beeps and boops. Some other characters seem to understand him. Puck especially continuously regrets that people are missing Wisp's puns (unreliable - maybe she's just being Puck).
• Squishy Wizard: Wisp has pathetically low base stats and stat growth in all three areas and is one of only three Heroes in the game (the others being Phoenix and Visage) that start with negative base armor. Needless to say, Wisp is very easy to kill if caught without escape.
• Teleportation Rescue: One possible use of Relocate is to bail out an endangered teammate, teleporting them away from the enemy. This allows said teammate to later return to the fight with full health and mana while buying time for reinforcements to arrive, though it's also common for Io to detach the Tether and return alone, leaving itself at the mercy of the enemy (who nonetheless will get less mileage from killing Io, a support, over killing a core hero).
• Time Abyss: As a Fundamental, Io is as old as creation itself.
• Time Master: The lore of Overcharge:
  Drawing on the energy of matter from all worlds, Io begins the unravelling of time.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Io is itself not an example of this trope (it has consistently been first pick/first ban material in professional games), but its synergy with certain heroes (notably Chaos Knight, Tiny and Gyrocopter) has historically caused these heroes to be nerfed to the point that they became underwhelming on their own, only ever pickable in a professional game with an Io teammate and can safely be disregarded if Io is banned or already picked by the other team.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: Its abilities are based on atoms and its backstory implies it's a sentient manifestation of the three major forces of quantum mechanics (Strong, Weak, and Electromagnetism).

Sylla, the Lone Druid

"Thousands of years of waiting... and yet, no time to waste."

Voiced by: Nolan North

Long ago, when history itself had yet to be recorded, Sylla, the wisest druid of the Bear Clan, was chosen by the powers of nature to protect the Seed. It was given to him with these words: "When all of the world has dimmed, when civilization has left these lands, when the world is slain and wracked by the endless deserts at the end of ages, plant the Seed." The Seed granted Sylla new youth and vitality, as well as the abilities to project his will in physical form and change his own form. However, the powers of the Seed attracted the attention of enemies, who waged war on the Bear Clan in an attempt to take it for themselves. Sylla fled the destruction as its sole survivor, taking the Seed with him and exiling himself deep into the wilderness. Countless millennia later, Sylla continues to protect the Seed, waiting for the time when he will plant it and destroying anything that threatens his destiny.

An unique, two-in-one hero, Sylla fights with his trusty Spirit Bear. The Bear is permanently summoned with Summon Spirit Bear, and function like a second hero with his skills and item inventory, and unlike most other summons, the Spirit Bear scales with Sylla's level and benefits from attribute bonuses. It has Entangling Claws for a chance to root enemies it attacks, Demolish to destroy buildings, and Return for quickly returning to Sylla's side. Sylla and the Bear also possess a Spirit Link that increases both of their attack speeds, while also causing the Spirit Bear's attacks to heal Sylla for a portion of its damage. If one of them is threatened, they can use Savage Roar to scare the enemies back to their fountain. Finally, Sylla can shed his current shell for his True Form, a humanoid bear with increased toughness and the Spirit Bear's Entangling Claws and Demolish. That, or he can just destroy everything himself with his super fast, long-ranged attacks.

In Dota Underlords, Lone Druid is a tier 4 hero. His ability, Summon Spirit Bear, calls a bear familiar to his side, who has a chance to stun enemies when attacking.

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• Adaptation Name Change: Was called Syllabear in DotA.
• Adaptation Species Change: A night elf in DotA, human in the remake.
• Anti-Structure: Demolish gives the Spirit Bear (and Sylla, when True Form is active) bonus damage against buildings.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Lone Druid has twice the number of item slots compared to other heroes, 6 for Sylla himself and 6 for the Spirit Bear. In theory this means he can build 12 big items and outcarry anything the enemy throws at him. In practice games almost never last that long for him to amass the ridiculous amount of money needed to build the aforementioned 12 big items; and long before that (if the game hasn't ended already) the enemy carry should have enough farm to kill the bear in seconds (the bear itself doesn't scale with stats and it's very hard to increase its durability with items), throwing 6 of your items down the drain. Lone Druid's damage steroids also don't scale as well to the late game compared to, say, Spectre or Medusa, and neither is his teamfight presence, so in the ultra late game his main strength is ratting, not fighting. Because of this, the unstoppable full 12-slotted Lone Druid is nothing more than a myth, and trying to go for it is suicide (as opposed to focusing on improving either the Druid or the bear and taking fights and towers early).
  • True Form gives Lone Druid a powerful bear form with a number of bonuses to make him a strong melee combatant and a powerful activated ability. However, it's rarely used to its fullest and generally gets skipped in favor of Lone Druid's basic abilities, since builds that itemize Lone Druid focus on his ranged capabilities, which gets undermined by True Form forcing him into melee, and it certainly doesn't help that True Form reduces his movement speed, which is very much not good for a melee hero. Alternatively, if he builds items for the Spirit Bear, Lone Druid shouldn't be trying to melee fight people because he'll just get squished, in which case it's used mostly for access to Battle Cry. This resulted in the ability eventually being reworked.
• Badass Teacher: For Ursa.
  Lone Druid (killing Ursa): "Have you forgotten what I taught you, Ulfsaar?"
• Bears Are Bad News: The Spirit Bear is the strongest summoned unit in Dota 2, boasting a hefty amount of baseline health that scales with Lone Druid's level.
• Bond Creature: The Spirit Bear.
• Brave Scot: Sylla sports a thick Scottish accent, commands a powerful bear to attack enemies and can be quite dangerous himself.
• The Chosen One: Due to his wisdom and righteousness, he was chosen to guard the Seed.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Lone Druid requires a lot of micromanagement to play effectively, as proper management of the Spirit Bear is paramount to Lone Druid's success. With enough practice, however, Lone Druid can quickly become one of the most dangerous heroes on the map, able to shove down lanes with impunity and deal lots of damage between Sylla himself and the Spirit Bear. The bear, in essence, can act as a sixth hero when properly farmed. Of course, he's not as micro-intensive as, say, Visage or Arc Warden given that he and the bear effectively have about one active ability each (and all of them are of the fire-and-forget variety), but you're still controlling two things at once.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Lone Druid effectively has two separate builds and playstyles: either build items on the Spirit Bear and use it as a tanky pusher while the Druid himself buffs it with Spirit Link and aura items, or build items on Lone Druid and use him as a long-range attacker with the bear serving as a meat shield and disabler. He'll almost never be getting items on both himself and his bear since it'll take twice as much farm to get them online.
• Doomed Hometown: His clan was attacked by rivals seeking the Seed, forcing Sylla on the run and sending him into exile for countless ages.
• Druidic Sickle: Fitting for a Druid, his weapon is an infinite supply of sickles which he throws at his enemies.
• Eyepatch of Power: The Rage of the Dark Wood cosmetic set gives an eyepatch to Lone Druid's human form and a similar patch of light fur on his bear form.
• Familiar: His Spirit Bear. It's never clearly stated whether the bear was a creature that bonded to Sylla (as suggested by the spell description) or if it's simply an extension of his will (as implied by his lore).
• Glass Cannon: Sylla has low starting Strength and average Strength gain, meaning that outside of True Form he is quite squishy and can be easily killed if focused on. However, the Spirit Bear's Defender ability effectively extends Lone Druid's health by a third by redirecting a part of the damage he takes to the Bear, and Spirit Link healing can keep him going a bit longer, making Sylla somewhat tankier than he appears.
• Green Thumb: The Spirit Bear's passive ability, Entangling Claws, sprouts roots that hold enemies in place.
• Harbinger of Impending Doom: His purpose is recreating life After the End, so whatever forced him to join the battle between the Radiant and Dire is not a good sign, and he's more than happy to accelerate the events.
  Lone Druid: "First blood! The end is set in motion! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
• Informed Loner: Despite his name, he is one of the few heroes who always has a companion by his side: his trusty Spirit Bear. And of course, this being a MOBA, he has to cooperate with 4 other players to succeed.
• Jack of All Stats: Unlike most other carries, Lone Druid is well-rounded and fairly potent at all stages of the game; he can harass and last hit with ease in the early game with the aid of his Bear, push towers extremely fast in the middle game, and has enough durability to spearhead pushes in the late game with the right item builds.
• Life Drain: Spirit Link is unique among lifesteal abilities in that the Spirit Bear heals Sylla with its attacks rather than itself.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • True Form and Spirit Link give Sylla a huge boost in health, damage output and attack speed, and he's fairly fast to begin with.
  • The rework that made the Spirit Bear level along with Sylla also turned it into this: Spirit Link allows it to hit very fast and fairly hard, it runs faster than most heroes, and has truckloads of health, making it a monster when given the right items. It was later also given the ability to gain attributes from items, gaining stat bonuses and attack damage like any other Universal hero.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Unlike every other summon in the game that isn't a clone, the Spirit Bear is functionally a fully-fledged hero in its own right. It has its own backpack and inventory, benefits from attribute bonuses (but has no attribute growth of its own), can use most runes, and even has its own Aghanim's Scepter and Aghanim's Shard upgrades.
• Metal Slime: Killing his bear yields a very large amount of gold and experience - sometimes more than killing a hero, but he's incredibly hard to kill thanks to his tankiness (2000 at level 4 and more depending on Lone Druid's level, which will be several times the health of a level 7 hero), an easy escape mechanism, and the ability to resummon him.
• Morphic Resonance: In bear form, Sylla retains his shoulderpad and beard; at the same time, his bear gains attributes of Sylla (such as a beard and braids) as it levels up.
• Nature Hero
• The Needs of the Many: He's willing to kill his friends and other Nature Heroes to guarantee the safety of the Seed, although he's not always happy about it.
  Lone Druid (killing Ursa): "There are more important causes in this world than your cubs, Ulfsaar."
  Lone Druid (killing Nature's Prophet): "I never thought the day would come that the Prophet's blood stained my hands.
• Non-Indicative Name: He's the Lone Druid, but his pet bear hardly ever leaves his side.
• Number Two: Because Lone Druid's effectiveness is so dependent on his bear (if he goes for the traditional build), managing to kill it will essentially render Sylla himself useless, especially since the cooldown of re-summoning the bear is so long (two minutes at the least) and the Bear cannot Buyback. This makes it dangerous for teams to rely too much on the bear, especially if it's carrying aura items like Assault Cuirass and Radiance, since killing it will render one of their main carries useless for at least that long and deny them the benefits of those auras. It's particularly the case in the 6.86 era, where Lone Druid tends to spend all his gold on the bear while the Druid himself carries little more than brown boots and a TP Scroll (and maybe Vladimir's Offering and a Cloak).
• Obvious Rule Patch: The 6.78 patch makes the health drain of activating Armlet of Mordiggian apply to both heroes and non-heroes, in order to address and eliminate how the Spirit Bear can use an active Armlet without suffering the health drain penalty. Prior to this, the Armlet, a 2600 gold item, would give the bear an extra 25 attack speed, 5 armor, 7 HP per second regeneration and 40 damage, all without having to worry about health drain, so players would just turn the Armlet on permanently and give it the power of a late game item for the price of a mid game one.
• Reality Warper: A low level version, Lone Druid's abilities comes from his power to project his will into reality.
• The Rival: To Lycan. Out of universe, they have roughly similar skills (summoning animal familiars to aid them in combat, skills that increase their damage and attack speed, and an ultimate that lets them transform into an animal) although Lycanthrope is more of a Lightning Bruiser than Sylla himself.
  Lone Druid (killing Lycanthrope): You and your pack of mongrels are nothing to me!
• Screaming Warrior: Savage Roar serves the purpose in-game of scattering his enemies, and several of his attack responses are roars, even in human form.
• Sinister Scythe: Carries a small one around, which he throws at enemies as his right-click attack in druid form.
• Stronger with Age: Strongly believes in this.
• Super Mode: His ultimate, True Form, temporarily turns him into an anthropomorphic bear and gives him access to the Spirit Bear's Demolish and Entangling Claws, while empowering both abilities, and increases his health and armor.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: Savage Roar forces enemies to flee towards their base in terror.
• Synchronization: The Spirit Bear cannot attack when it reaches a certain distance away from the Lone Druid (if the bear doesn't have Aghanim's Scepter), and when the bear is killed, Sylla will also take damage. Spirit Link will also cause Lone Druid to heal from the Spirit Bear's attacks, both will cast Savage Roar at the same time, and Sylla gains the bear's abilities in True Form.
• Time Abyss: Sylla is older than written history itself, and has been kept alive by the Seed for millennia.
• Touched by Vorlons: Whatever powers granted Sylla the Seed also gave him his abilities.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: During his transformation, Lone Druid becomes invulnerable to damage.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Into an anthropomorphic bear.

Banehallow, the Lycan

"Was I a wolf who dreamed he was a man?"

Voiced by: Nolan North

In the now-fallen kingdom of Slom, the house of Ambry was recognized as the greatest of the noble families. But as the Last King of Slom descended into madness and cruelty, the house of Ambry chose to rebel against the King's increasingly corrupt ways, sending an army to the capital. However, the attempted coup ended in bloody failure, and in retaliation, the Last King of Slom had every member of the Ambry family killed, save for the lord and his youngest son Banehallow. The two survivors were brought before the King, who ordered his court mages to transform the son into a wolf, who would then kill his father as an act of so-called poetic justice, a traitor betrayed by his heir. But the spell failed to transform Banehallow's mind, and instead of killing his father, he turned against his captors and managed to kill many before the King's knights finally drove him out into the night, with Lord Ambry laughing even as the King decided to take his execution into his own hands. And while Slom and its Last King would fall at the hands of Karroch the Beastmaster years later, Banehallow still wanders the world as the Lycan, a half-man, half-wolf forever seeking vengeance for the slaughter of his family.

An adept jungler, a great pusher, and absolutely terrifying when well fed, Banehallow von Ambry is an adaptable carry capable of decimating towers and entire teams when played correctly. His first skill, Summon Wolves does Exactly What It Says on the Tin, summoning 2 wolves (5 with his level 25 talent) that can be used in a variety of ways, including scouting, farming, and fighting alongside the Lycan; at later levels, they also receive invisibility and the ability to cripple the enemy's attack speed. His second skill, Howl, gives a global attack and health buff to all allies on the map, with the strength of the buffs increased at night, allowing the Lycan to support ganks and teamfights anywhere, anytime. His third skill, Feral Impulse is a passive buff to his attack speed and damage. This bonus extends to any units under Lycan's control And finally, his ultimate, Shapeshift, has him stop and take a moment to assume his true form. After the transformation is complete, Lycan and all units under his control temporarily gain massively increased movement speed, immunity to slows, a chance to deal extra damage on attacks, and increased night vision, turning Lycan into a terrifying Lightning Bruiser.

In Artifact, Lycan is a green hero. His Continuous Effect, Feral Impulse, grants +2 Attack to his neighboring allies. His signat\\ure card, the Savage Wolf, is a creep that is modified with +1 Attack and +2 Health after each combat phase.
In Dota Underlords, Lycan is a tier 3 hero. His ability, Summon Wolves, calls two wolves to Lycan's side, then transforms him into a wolf with increased health, speed, and a chance to deal a critical hit.

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• Adaptation Species Change: Lycan was an Eredar in the original Dota, but was changed to a human in the remake.
• The Beastmaster: He can summon canine familiars with Summon Wolves. Feral Impulse and Shapeshift also encourage building summoning items like Helm of the Dominator on him as well, since they benefit all units under his control.
• Blue Blood: Formerly, as an Ambry scion.
• Canine Companion: His wolves.
• Creepy Good: Banehallow looks nasty in both his human and wolf forms, but is an undoubtedly heroic character.
• Critical Hit Class: Shapeshift gives all units under Lycan's control the ability to crit, including Lycan himself. Expect to see a lot of red numbers when he's fighting while Shapeshifted.
• Cursed with Awesome: Being turned into a werewolf was meant to be a curse, which would force him to maul his own father to death. However, Banehallow's mind was strong enough to remain in control, turning this curse into his greatest weapon.
  Forever a slave to his lycanthropy, Banehallow has come to accept his curse, and embrace his own savagery.
• Familiar: His summoned wolves.
• Forced Transformation: He was turned into a lycanthrope. This was intended to punish him, but he used it instead to kill a number of his captors. He has since accepted and embraced his feral nature.
• Fragile Speedster: His wolves max out at 320 health, comparable to ranged creeps, and have no armor at all. They're also extremely fast, but still easily wiped off the map with a few autoattacks.
• Glass Cannon: His wolves max out at 320 health, comparable to ranged creeps, and have no armor at all. On the other hand, they hit fairly hard and when under the effects of Feral Impulse and Howl they will do outrageous damage, but still easily wiped off the map with a few autoattacks.
• Healing Factor: Wolves summoned by level 4 Summon Wolves gain a massive 15 HP regeneration.
• Husky Russkie: Invoked with his voice actor's Fake Russian accent.
• Invisibility: His summoned wolves at level 3.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: In his backstory, Banehallow was unable to slay the corrupt Last King of Slom before being driven out. Fortunately, the king did not get off scot-free, as Beastmaster later finished what Lycan started.
• Last of His Kind: The last remaining member of the House of Ambry, after they were purged for rebelling against a corrupt king.
• Lightning Bruiser: Shapeshift lets him run faster than the normal maximum movement speed (it's locked on 650), and prevents him from being slowed. It also gives him a free critical hit. Good luck trying to get away from him when he's in wolf form.
• Magically Inept Fighter: Lycan's entire damage output comes from his and his summon's raw physical DPS, boosted by Howl and Feral Impulse. He has no form of nuke.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast
• Natural Weapon: His claws in wolf form. He does appear to have claws in human form, but doesn't use them.
• Noble Fugitive
• Noble Wolf: Outside of being rather rude, there's nothing really evil about Lycan.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Almost entirely wolf when in wolf form. Appears to have burning embers on his mane.
• The Rival: To Lone Druid.
  Lycan (killing Lone Druid): "Bears are no match for the cunning of wolves."
• Shout-Out:
  • To the Twilight fandom.
  Lycan: "I thought you were team Yakov!"
  • His face is similar to X-Men movies' Sabretooth. With Curse of Ambry cosmetic items, he became similar to Hugh Jackman's Wolverine instead.
• Sudden Name Change: He was known as Banehallow the Lycanthrope in the original DotA, and was initially called Lycanthrope in Dota 2 before having his name shortened to Lycan.
• Summon Magic: Summon Wolves
• Super-Empowering: Aghanim's Scepter grants Lycan Wolf Bite, which converts an ally hero to a wolf with all of the properties of Shapeshift while retaining their abilities, giving them both speed and initiation. Both Lycan and the converted hero get 30% lifesteal which are shared when close to each other, similar to Lone Druid.
• Super Mode: Shapeshift temporarily turns Lycan into his true form, increasing his night vision, raising his movement speed to the cap and granting him a critical strike. Using the level 25 talent and an Octarine Core, he can use the wolf form almost permanently (as in, it only has 1 second downtime)!
• Super-Speed: In wolf form, Lycan's and all of his units' movement speed are raised to 650, making them faster than the normal maximum of 550.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Downplayed. Shapeshift has a 1.5 second transformation time, during which Lycan is fully vulnerable, but the transformation itself cannot be interrupted except by killing him.
• Unishment: He was cursed to become a wolf to kill his father, but it went horribly right and he turned against his handlers.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: His ultimate, Shapeshift.
• Wolverine Claws: His means of attack when not in wolf form.

Magnus, the Magnoceros

"Yes, the thunder you hear is my hooves!"

Voiced by: Dempsey Pappion (Dota 2, Dota Underlords), Elroy Powell (Artifact)

Among the blacksmiths living in the shadow of volcanic Mount Joerlak, few materials are more highly sought-after than the horn of a Magnoceros, and the Magnoceros known as Magnus has the most valuable horn of them all. For many years, Magnus had defended his people from every last hunting raid that attempted to climb Mount Joerlak and return with a Magnoceros horn. However, the Matriarch, leader of the Magnoceroi, grew increasingly worried about the possibility of Mount Joerlak erupting and called for relocation to a safer place, which Magnus dismissed. But eventually Mount Joerlak did erupt, wiping out half of Magnus' kin and forcing the rest to flee north, where the Magnoceroi were ambushed by hundreds of hunters. Magnus led his fellow Magnoceroi warriors into battle while the elders, mothers, and calves headed for safety. Many Magnoceroi perished, including the Matriarch herself, but Magnus survived and split ways with his surviving kin, swearing he would not return until every one of the poachers he believed responsible for Mount Joerlak's eruption has been impaled upon his horn.

Arguably the initiator of Dota, as well as a fairly competent semi-carry, Magnus is capable of turning teamfights around and setting up entire teams to get mowed down in seconds. His first skill, Shockwave is a long-ranged nuke with comparatively low mana cost and cooldown, which also slows enemies and pulls them in slightly. His second skill, Empower grants anyone under its effect a major damage boost, and if they're melee, a powerful Cleave, while his third skill, Skewer pulls quadruple duty as a escape, early-game replacement for blink dagger until he can farm it, nuke, and repositioning ability either by itself, or comboed with Reverse Polarity and Blink Dagger to pull an entire enemy team to their dooms. His Ultimate, Reverse Polarity is a medium area of effect stun that pulls everyone in its effect into a small cluster. All of Magnus' abilities synergize amazingly well with his Ultimate: after catching a group of foes with Reverse Polarity, Magnus can easily hit them all with Shockwave, Skewer them back to his team, and cast Empower to allow himself or his allies to cleave them all with attacks. This devastating combo makes Magnus into one of the most powerful heroes to have when it's time to teamfight.

In Artifact, Magnus is a green hero. His signature card, Empower, modifies a unit with +3 Attack and Cleave.

In Dota Underlords, Magnus is a tier 2 hero. His ability, Empower, temporarily grants an ally extra damage and Cleave.

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• Adaptation Species Change: In the original DotA Magnus was a member of the Warcraft race called Magnataurs, which can best be described as a mix between a mammoth and a centaur. To avoid legal issues he is now a centauroid woolly rhinoceros.
• Berserk Button: Don't touch his horn.
• Corralling Vacuum: Reverse Polarity instantly groups all affected enemies in front of Magnus in addition to stunning them for a few seconds, making it extremely easy for Magnus to follow up with a Horn Toss and Skewer combo to push them toward his teammates, who in turn would have a much easier job landing their own AoE abilities on multiple enemies. There's a reason Reverse Polarity is considered one of the best team fight abilities in the game, in spite of its comparatively low damage and small area of effect.
• Difficult, but Awesome: All but 1 of his skills falls into this: Shockwave is a very thin area nuke with a comparatively slow speed, but has a low cooldown and mana cost, letting a Magnus that can reliably hit it force opponents out of lane. Skewer is a repositioning skill that can drag up to 4 heroes a long distance, being usable to push a ganker away from a low HP hero, drag a hero towards your waiting team or simply ram into them, but like Shockwave, is a very small AoE ability. Reverse Polarity has one of the smallest areas of effects for an ultimate ability, but also combines being a very long stun, forcing all opponents together to land a perfect Skewer or Shockwave as well as make full use of Empower granting a cleave to the melee carry. All in all, Magnus relies on smaller area of effect spells with a more powerful and cheaper effect than counterparts like Tidehunter's Ravage or Dragon Knight's Breathe Fire.
• Dishing Out Dirt: He can channel tectonic energy to create shockwaves, or pull his foes together.
• Dynamic Entry: Skewer or Blink Dagger/Reverse Polarity combo.
• Evil Poacher: Those who hunt his people for their horns.
• Fake Special Attack: Reverse Polarity has a relatively long cast time and an easily distinguishable visual effect, allowing Magnus players to fake it by interrupting the animation.
• Fantastic Racism: Magnus seems to hate the Slithereen, given that he has special kill responses towards all of them that insult their race.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: Skewer drags every unit he collides with towards his final destination.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Magnus can give this to himself or a friendly hero with Empower. Reverse Polarity's also capable of grouping enemies together, magnifying the effects of these.
• Heroic Sacrifice: It's possible to pull a ganker off your ally with Skewer, but if you don't have Reverse Polarity to follow it up with, or simply don't have enough allies nearby, you end up face to face with a ganker without your escape ability.
• Horn Attack: Magnus' horn can be used to skewer enemies with Skewer and toss them behind himself with Horn Toss.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: He's attracted to Enchantress: she's a doe, he's a rhino.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: His third skill, Skewer.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: Magnus skewers people on the side of his horn.
• Improvised Weapon: His Immortal weapon Shock of the Anvil is an anvil wielded as if it were a hammer.
• Lightning Bruiser: Magnus has a movement speed of 315, a very fast charging Skewer, high Agility, is fairly tough, and has arguably the single most powerful teamfight ability in the entire game.
• Magic Knight: A common build for Magnus would be to get a Blink Dagger, then focus on DPS-increasing items to boost his damage output, as he has a fair bit of agility growth, a good damage steroid, and can hit large groups easily with his cleave and Reverse Polarity. While not as effective as a traditional carry, it's still quite strong.
• Magikarp Power: Of all focused initiators, Magnus is the worst in early game ganks, but the best at late-game high-stakes teamfights, given that he can help his carry farm with Empower, do a fair bit of damage himself, and usually has his ultimate up every teamfight while the other two mass-disable ultimates, Tidehunter's Ravage and Enigma's Black Hole have nearly twice the cooldown and the heroes themselves can't fight as well as Magnus can.
• Magnetism Manipulation: Reverse Polarity changes properties of matter, sucking all nearby enemies in front of Magnus.
• Mars Needs Women: Has a crush on Enchantress, who is more humanoid then him.
• Master of None: Not Magnus himself, but rather his Skewer ability, which pays for being a low-cost repositoning, nuking, slowing, mobility, and escape skill by being not all that good at any of those. Its slow is incredibly short, does less damage than the more easily spamable Shockwave, has a massive 30 second cooldown, can't escape all that well because it's liable to drag heroes with Magnus, and starts from Magnus's location, meaning a Blink Dagger is needed to really use it as a repositioning ability.
• Meaningful Name: May be derived from "magnetism", based on his ultimate. Alternatively, in fitting with the physics theme, it may be derived from the Magnus effect.
• Money Multiplier: While Empower doesn't directly increase the amount of gold gained, it grants whoever Magnus casts it on both a damage boost, and if they're melee, a cleave and can increase a carry's farming speed by a very notable amount.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: His body is centauroid in shape, except that instead of being half-man half-horse, he's more half-man, half-woolly rhinoceros.
• Prehistoric Monster: He has many traits of elasmotheres and woolly rhinos in his design.
• Ramming Always Works: Skewer.
• Reverse Polarity: Used as the name for his ultimate.
• Ring Out: Can invoke this with Skewer to drag other heroes onto a cliff, often during the first moments of the game. What makes this truly hilarious is when he does this to the entire enemy team with Reverse Polarity. Doing so without ending up on a cliff yourself however...
• Shockwave Stomp: After sucking all enemies in front of him with Reverse Polarity, Magnus follows up by stunning them with a powerful slam.
• Spam Attack: Shockwave has a fairly short cooldown and low mana cost. After he gets a Bottle, Magnus can easily use it to harass, last hit and force an enemy out of the lane.
• Sword Beam: Shockwave consists of a well, shockwave of energy created by Magnus slamming his spear on the ground.
• Sphere of Destruction: Reverse Polarity appears a huge collapsing sphere moments before it goes off.
• Use Your Head: Skewer. As he's part rhinoceros, this is to be expected.
• Vigilante Man

Marci

*Whistle*

Very little is known about Marci. She is mostly seen travelling in the company of Mirana, the Princess of the Moon, but how they became friends is a secret neither seem willing to reveal. Although she does not speak, Marci is a loyal and dependable ally for any who earn her trust and friendship, fiercely defending her companions against those who threaten them. Enemies best beware to avoid underestimating her dainty size and unremarkable appearance, for within Marci hides a great and mysterious power that makes her a devastating foe in unarmed combat.

The game's first hero to be based on a character from the animated series DOTA: Dragon's Blood, Marci is a versatile melee hero as equally capable of helping her allies in the midst of battle as she is of pummeling her opponents into the ground in close combat. With her first ability, Dispose, Marci grabs her target and throws them behind her, stunning and damaging any foes caught in the landing area. If the thrown target is an enemy, they are stunned and damaged as well. Her second ability is Rebound. With it, Marci dashes to a target and leaps off from them, damaging and slowing enemies caught in the impact of her landing. Additionally, if the target she jumped off from was an ally, her teammate will receive a speed boost. Her third ability, Sidekick, grants a targeted ally bonus damage and lifesteal while simultaneously giving herself the same buff (if cast on herself, a random ally near her will receive the bonus). Finally, Marci's ultimate is Unleash. When activated, Marci removes certain debuffs from herself and gains bonuses to her speed and attack speed. During this state, a powerful pulse of energy bursts out from Marci's form after she makes a certain number of attacks, damaging and slowing enemies around her while also temporarily disabling her ability to attack for 1.5 seconds. Although she may seem little more than simple Cute Mute, a well-played Marci can use her furious fists to mop the floor with even the mightiest warriors.

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• Badass Adorable: A small, charming, and friendly Cute Mute who can stand toe-on-toe with gods, monsters, and sapient cosmic forces all while mostly relying on her own two fists and some agile leaping.
• Barefisted Monk: Her basic attacks are primarily quick punches from her fists, with Unleash allowing her to deliver them at blinding speed.
• Canon Immigrant: She was originally one of the main characters in DOTA: Dragon's Blood, but proved popular enough with fans that she was added to the actual game as a playable hero.
• Cute Mute: She never says a word, but who needs to when they're as bright-eyed as her?
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Aghanim's Shard allows Marci to use Rebound to throw the targeted ally, instead of jumping off them herself.
• Magikarp Power: Marci's weakness is that she has a horrible early game capabilities, forcing her to play as the supportive kill-setup character (something she's really good at) while foregoing killing others, and generally her solo-farm capabilities is less than stellar so she can't be a hard-carry like Anti-Mage and savvy players will pressure her early game so she can't function well in the next phases. Regardless, if she's even allowed to get some money ahead, beware that she suddenly stops needing others to stunlock and pummel you to death.
• Killer Rabbit: For humanoid standards (the non-humanoid standard is Puck). Marci is an unassuming Cute Mute that might look like a glorified grunt when compared to other fantastic creatures. She's actually a Pint-Sized Powerhouse extraordinary that will pummel those fantastic creatures around her into oblivion with just her bare hands in blinding speed. Look at the blood on her cheek in her portrait.
• Life Drain: Sidekick grants both Marci and another ally lifesteal as long as they aren't too far from each other.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She's pretty small and dainty-looking, but that doesn't stop her from being able to beat the absolute crap out of enemies with her mere fists and tossing even giants like Tiny behind herself with enough force to stun them.
• The Speechless: Marci cannot speak, and her responses are all short, quick whistles.

Mirana, the Princess of the Moon

"The stars are in alignment, and our victory is certain."

Voiced by: Gin Hammond

Although she was in line to inherit the Solar Throne, the princess Mirana relinquished her position in order to dedicate her life to Selemene, the Goddess of the Moon. Riding atop a feline familiar, Mirana, who has become known to many as the Princess of the Moon, is a proud and poised figure, attuned to the cycles of the night sky. Armed with a magical bow crafted from moonstone whose arrows draw power from the moonlight, Mirana now prowls the Nightsilver Woods, keeping Selemene's preserve safe from those who would intrude upon its sacred beauty and attempt to make off with the goddess' most prized treasures.

Mirana is a semi-carry, semi-support hero possessing several utilities that can help her and her allies while still contributing a lot of great damage once she buys the necessary carry items. She has an excellent gap-closer, Leap, which causes her mount to bound in the direction she is facing, allowing her to reposition herself in a more favorable position for further attacking or retreating. This spell has multiple charges, and she gains a brief bonus to her attack and movement speed after landing. If she is close to the enemy, she can unleash the Starstorm, raining down meteors in a huge area around her and an enemy closest to her will get struck with another meteor. Mirana's signature skill is the Sacred Arrow, where she shoots one arrow that slowly travels in a very long line, ignoring any obstacles until it collides with an enemy, whereupon it damages and stuns them based on how far the arrow traveled, with the stun maxing out at a ludicrous 5 seconds. A well-positioned and unhindered Mirana can play the deadly sniper that catches the enemy off-guard and let her allies gang up on the victim, however, she has to aim well and make sure no creeps get in the way of the arrow, or else it's the creep that gets stunned. Lastly, she can set up various ambushes or escapes using Moonlight Shadow, where she grants herself and all allied heroes invisibility for a set amount of time, only revealing themselves when attacking and going invisible again as long as they are idling and the time hasn't expired.

In Dota Underlords, Mirana is a tier 4 hero. Her ability, Sacred Arrow, inflicts a long stun and heavy damage onto an enemy from a long range.

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• Abdicate the Throne: She left the Solar Throne to become a Princess of the Moon.
• Accidental Aiming Skills: Sacred Arrow's massive hitbox and nigh-invisibility can lead to other heroes running into it, and the sheer damage and stun duration means even if it's not an optimal target, she's still come out far ahead.
  Mirana: It was not luck, but skill!.
• Achilles' Heel: Moonlight Shadow will not work if a hero is silenced, so even in cases where the enemy has no detection, silencing Mirana or her allies before the fade effect sets in will prevent them from going invisible, and casting an AoE silence can bring them out of invisibility.
• Adaptation Name Change: Starstorm and Sacred Arrow used to be named Starfall and Elune's Arrow in the original DotA. This had to be changed because the former is also the name of a skill in Warcraft III, while the latter is a reference to Warcraft lore.
• Adaptation Species Change: Like Luna, she was originally a Night Elf.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Unintentionally inverted with the Crescent Bow cosmetic item, which actually makes her Sacred Arrow easier to spot and avoid.
• Crazy Cat Lady: A lot of her voice lines lend this impression for laughs.
  Here, kitty kitty.
• Curse Cut Short: If the Sacred Arrow hits a creep instead of a hero.
  Mirana: Son of a...
• Death from Above: Her first skill, Starstorm, drops a wave of shooting stars on every enemy in the vicinity.
• Defiant to the End: One of her death quotes shows just how she valued her pride and nobility status:
  Mirana: I'll never bow!
• Difficult, but Awesome: Sacred Arrow is considered to be the hardest stun to land in the game, since it's an extremely slow projectile that's only effective after it's traveled a long distance. It takes considerable patience to predict your target's path, not to mention that it's easily spotted and evaded by wary players. However, landing a long-range arrow can yield a lot of damage and the longest stun in the game (5 seconds).
• Exactly What I Aimed At: Her reaction to hitting Roshan with Sacred Arrow, which is laughably easy since Roshan doesn't move most of the time. Or worse, Roshan's large hitbox blocked Mirana's true target, and she's too proud to admit it.
• Field Power Effect: Moonlight Shadow, Mirana's ultimate, applies a global buff that turns her entire team invisible. It's unique among invisibility spells in that the fade time remains in effect even after breaking invisibility, meaning that allies can turn invisible again for the 15 second duration of the spell.
• Fragile Speedster: Mirana has above-average movement speed and Leap, which makes her jump forward and further boosts movement speed, makes her one of the best chasers and escapers in the game. However, she has one of the worst starting Strength and Strength growths in the game, making her easy to kill if Leap is on cooldown.
• Fun with Acronyms: Mirana's Dota 2 title, "Princess of the Moon", is something of a Shout-Out to her old DotA title, "Priestess of the Moon", both of which use the same initials. The latter could not be used due to it being a hero title from Warcraft 3.
• Horse Archer: More like Tiger Archer.
• Horse of a Different Color: By default she rides on a white tiger named Sagan, and none of her cosmetic mounts are horses.
• Human Shield: One of the best solution of avoiding her Sacred Arrows is standing behind a creep.
  Mirana: Who spoiled that shot!?
• Impossibly-Low Neckline
• Invisibility: Moonlight Shadow grants this to her entire team, making it great for setting up ganks and teamfights, or helping her allies get out of a bad situation.
• In a Single Bound: Leap allows her to jump forward a good distance.
• Jack of All Stats: Mirana is one of the few heroes in the game who can be played as a full-on carry, or as a utility support due to her skill layout. She has a good damage nuke, a long-range stun, an escape spell that also serves as a speed buff, a global invisibility spell, and is a ranged hero with decent stat growth that allows her physical damage to scale. Due to her flexibility and array of useful spells, she can be played in almost any lane and be put to almost any role depending on her team's needs.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery
• Lady of War: Very calm, reserved, fights with a bow, and capable of playing a carry to wreck the enemy team.
• The Leader:
  • Amongst the servants of Selemene, Mirana seems to hold the title, with Luna as her Lancer/Number Two. Mirana is also aware of Luna's growing resentment towards her about this and does her best to keep her in line.
  • Gameplay-wise, Mirana can be played as such, as she can make calls about when to initiate team fights either by a well-placed arrow inflicting a lengthy disable on a valuable target, or getting everyone invisible with her ultimate ability for an ambush initiation. She can also save teammates by rendering them invisible when they are being chased away.
• Lead the Target: Sacred Arrow travels extremely slowly for a castable spell, making it very easy for opponents to dodge it if they see it coming.
• Lunacy: She draws most of her powers from the moon.
• Mage Marksman: She fights with a bow and magic, and can deal a fair amount of damage with both.
• Master of None: She is most often classified more as a semi-carry rather than a true carry, and her spells are very mana-hungry. If she's played as a carry then she must try to end the game as quickly as possible since she can't fight toe-to-toe against actual carries, and if she's played as a support she has to get lots of levels and a decent amount of farm in order to make the most of her magic nukes and maintain her mana pool.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: Starstorm calls down a wave of meteorites to hit enemy units around Mirana.
• Ms. Fanservice: Often praised for her shapely body, as well as having her shoulders bare and her cleavage displays a nice rack. Furthermore, a few of her rare quotes is about meowing like a kitty.
• Multi Shot: When using Sacred Arrow, Mirana will fire three arrows at once with the appropriate level 20 talent.
• Never My Fault: Blames others for missing her Sacred Arrow.
• Non-Indicative Name: Mirana's cast animation implies that her Sacred Arrow is actually a thrown spear.
• One-Hit Kill: If it hits a non-Ancient creep, Sacred Arrow kills the creep instantly.
• Panthera Awesome: Her default mount is a tiger.
• Projectile Spell: Mirana's Sacred Arrow stuns the first enemy unit it strikes for a duration based on the distance where Mirana fired her arrow and the target hit.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue, being the calm, composed main acolyte of moon, to Luna's red, the violent and sadistic moon... hit-woman.
• Rich Bitch: Smug, haughty, entitled, and condescending towards her enemies, calling them "Mutt", "Dog", "Cur", etc...
• Royals Who Actually Do Something
• Splash Damage Abuse: Starstorm will drop an extra star at melee range after the initial wave, dealing 75% of the damage of the first wave. This allows Mirana to deal a heavy amount of damage to a target by Leaping right next to them and casting Starstorm, since the first wave will most likely kill any nearby creeps or weak units, leaving only the strong one to eat another hit.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: The Aghanim's Scepter Mirana build, which can potentially deal a hefty 825 burst damage to a target hit by both the first wave and the extra star from the double Starstorm. An additional Sacred Arrow is enough to kill or cripple most targets, and that's before Mirana gets her Ethereal Blade...
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: On surface, she might seem to be getting along with Luna on a common goal together. But their formalities seem forced, and they seem to be naturally more happy to get into a Cat Fight about who gets to be the top Selemene servant. Coming from Mirana, this makes sense, as she doesn't believe that an ex-bandit like Luna should get the privileges of a leader.
• Warrior Prince
• Weak, but Skilled: She has low stat growth across the board, but makes up for it with her extremely powerful kit and the utility she brings to her team.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Despite her flexibility, many of Mirana's greatest strengths are also hard-countered by the right items and spells.
  • While Moonlight Shadow is very powerful in the early game since its global range allows her to effectively give her whole team a Shadow Blade for ganking or escaping, it's dodgy in the late game at best, since it can be easily defeated by any form of detection or silence, and competent teams can use good prediction and map awareness to turn ganks completely around by using the other team's complacency against them. In fact, simply picking Mirana can actually be a detriment to a team since it will cause your opponents to buy detection items earlier than usual and use them more frequently, meaning that it will greatly hinder any of your teammates with their own invisibility abilities (or who often purchase Shadow Blades), and result in more frequent de-warding.
  • Sacred Arrow has the longest stun duration in the game, however it can also be countered pretty easily by stun-removing spells. This means that if there's an Abaddon, Legion Commander or Oracle on the enemy team, they can simply purge the 5-second stun off of an ally that's been hit with an arrow, and in the first two cases do so on a lower cooldown than Sacred Arrow itself.
  • Mirana herself has low to mediocre base stats and low base damage (combined with slow projectile speed making last-hitting difficult), so while she's capable of making foolproof ganks and scaling decently with farm, early on she's as powerful as a lane creep. Played as a carry she requires a fair amount of babysitting to ensure that she gets the farm she needs, and played as an early roamer virtually all of her effectiveness lies in landing Sacred Arrow.

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