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Guide Version | Forum Version

Laughs aside...

Greetings! My name is NoWorries and I am an accomplished guide writeralthough this is only my second DotA guide (I had previously written a guideon Manta Style an eternity ago at DotA­Allstars). While English is my firstlanguage, I am dyslexic so you might be forced to deal with grammaticalerrors and word confusion

So why am I writing this? The answer is simple; I want to. I have playedDotA for a long time, like before Armlet existed and have played throughthick and thin of just about every kind of DotA imaginable. As a result, I haveseen the good, the bad, the ugly, and the what were you thinking. Thisguide will focus mostly on the what were you thinking.

What were you thinking?

This list is comprehensive but not finished. As DotA evolves and new thingsare introduced and old ones fade out and game mechanics are changed, wecan only scrape the surface of our understanding of such a complex game.The best way to explain would be with an example.

Many versions ago, you could stack Bashers. This was almost commonpractice on Troll Warlord who was also a very different hero back then.

Someone today seeing a TW stacking/buying a Basher might be inclined to

Misc guide Author: No_WorriesMap Vers.: 6.67b

Please Don't Buy That

A guide on item/herocombinations

Date Posted: 02/06/13Last Comment:31/08/2014 Total Votes: 23 Current Rating: 6.40 Views: 44374

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Someone today seeing a TW stacking/buying a Basher might be inclined toflame the person for being a "noob" or a "tard" or any such words from a 12year old's vocabulary. While the insults are unnecessary, the premise isimportant, which brings us back to the guide.

You will find 44 combinations below. They range from Mechanic issues to flatout just bad. Each will offer an explanation as well as alternative choices tobuy. I encourage you to come up with more to add to this list. Here is wherethe discussion started. So without further ado...

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Mechanics3. Aghanim's Scepter4. Newb Mistakes5. Flat out just bad

Mechanics

This section compiles any Item/Hero combination that flat out does notwork because of mechanics.

Show

This section focuses on heroes you should never buys AghanimsScepter on

Show

Aghanim's offers a pitiful amount of damage but now cuts the cooldownfrom 40 to 20. This is still not an investment worth making for manyreasons. The biggest is that 20 seconds is still too long to be used twice ina fight. The next biggest is that for 4200 there are way better items Lioncould purchase.A better choice:

Dagon for damageEB for damageCyclone for disableGuinsoos for disableDagger for positioning

Aghanim's increases the damage ratio, seems good right? Wrong, even ona 4000 health hero, the difference between Aghanim's damage ratio andnot Aghanim's damage ratio is 280 health. Dagon 1 accomplishes this forless. Also the stats offered for 4200 are not nearly sufficient to providethe tanking that Necro wants.

It has now been buffed to disable buyback. All this does is make this item

extremely situational. With buybacks being repeatedly nerfed, it makes

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extremely situational. With buybacks being repeatedly nerfed, it makesthis item more situational. If facing a Tinker/Furion, this is when thesituational comes into play.A better choice:

Your choice of Bloodstone/Shivas/Guinsoos/Heart

Dumping 4200 for 150 cast range and +1 to the multiplier is a total waste.How meaningless is +1? If OD had 250 intelligence and the target ascrappy 50, we're talking about 2000 damage or 2200 damage, that's apathetic difference. Combine that with his ult having an incredibly longcooldown and is very situational to begin with; you really couldn't spendyour money worse buying this itemA better choice:

Refresher for double ult would deal more damageBlink for initiation would double as an added escape mechShivas for the same cost allows for quite a bit more damage inevery aspect

One of the most common items on Gyro, and it really is a waste. Gyro'spower comes from Flak Cannon which requires you be within the 1000 castrange of his ult anyway. It pushes creeps unnecessarily making it harderfor your team to farm and easier for the enemy to farm not to mentionyou don't get experience from those creeps. Combine that with needing tokill approximately 100 creeps using his global ultimate means it does notspeed up his farming at all. Even in caster builds EB increases yourpotential far more.A better choice:

BkBEBButterflyDR

His Aghanim's has also gone through many changes. The problem is theyaren't very good. The ias is a minuscule amount and the added killthreshold is just bringing it back to pre­nerfed times. His ultimate is now allabout MS boosting; too bad there are other heroes that serve this role farbetter. If you're playing Axe, you're not playing a MS aura hero, so don'tbuy Aghanim's.A better choice:

ShivasACHeartBlademailHalberd

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His Aghanim's is a new addition and players started theorizing about doublepulse effects, which doesn't happen. The only reason to buy Aghanim's isto *get* pulse with blackhole (since you won't get it otherwise). The issueis what he needs to pull of blackhole to begin with (Blink/BkB). Consideringmost Enigma's pick up Mek even before Blink makes this super superlategame luxury (and probably not even then).

See same response for Enigma

Despite his Aghanim's being buffed, all it did was call to my attention. Itseems that it would be a huge boost in dps with 23 more dps being added,except there are many things to consider in if you are trying to actuallycarry Leshrac. BkB, Bloodstone, Heart, and Guinsoos are all far better(even necessary) before you want to add some dps to his ultimate.

He recently got his Aghanim's added and at first glance it seems incredible,+7 seconds! There's some issues though. The first being Kaldr does notuse items or farm well so getting into a 4200 gold item is difficult. Thesecond is that the damage is only 200 more. The last is how situational theeffect of the anti­heal is; Healing Strats are exceedingly unpopularmeaning the only reason to consider getting this is to counter Alchemist.But I think as his un­upgraded ult is though, it is more than enough. As forbetter items, he doesn't use anything well so cheap small items work best.

As his ultimate is misused by so many players to begin with, all this itemdoes is dump 4200 for getting 2 more creeps per ult, an absolute waste. Ifused properly then the Aghanim's will most likely not add any damageanyway as the bounces hit heroes before building up damage. You canliterally buy anything else.

As Focus Fire is one of the most underwhelming and useless ultimates tobegin with, dumping 4200 to improve it is a waste. You can literally buyanything else.

Ever since his ult was changed (standard 10 bounces) his Aghanim's was

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Ever since his ult was changed (standard 10 bounces) his Aghanim's wasmoved into the garbage tier. The +100 cast range (from 750 to 850) is amild boost, and the 90 damage per bounce seems massive (90x10 is 900!)except that his ultimate is beyond situational and usually gets 4 bouncesat best. A better choice is any nice cheap support item as Lich needs 0items to participate.

It seems so massively powerful. Global cast range AND affecting buildings!?Too bad you don't get both. You get either the cast range OR the glyph asthe your buildings will not be under fire while your team is; making thisreally not as helpful as it seems.A better choice:

MekGuinsoosPipeNecroVlads, ie support items

Similar to Leshrac, Luna's recent buff brought to my attention how bad thisis. Some argue that a caster Luna is a viable option, going Aghanim's,Refresher Orb, Veil, and BkB. Here's the problem, Refresher+Aghanim's is infact 7200 damage over 24 beams. However, it takes 7 long tediousseconds to get her ultimate off. Then you have her ultimate being 100%blocked by BkB. Lastly you have her ultimate getting reduced by everysingle target. With 5 heroes, that leaves wiggle room for 19 targets.Between summons and creeps, it's very reasonable to have more than 24targets. All in all, that's a huge dump of gold for a very unreliable ultimate.

This was the worst addition to the Aghanim List. Besides SWM being anabsolute garbage hero, all this upgrade does is allow you to blow throughyour mana pool even faster without doing any amount of damage. Hisultimate is his worst ability so dumping 4200 to piss away mana faster thanIverson spends money is an absolute waste. He doesn't use itemsparticularly well either, meaning SWM should be played as a support andpicking up small cheap items, not Aghanim's.

I think this item is actually quite dangerous for Juggernaut as people*think* it makes his ultimate better. If you look at the item, it adds 3slashes at each level, ~630 damage from the slashes at each point. At 6it's a massive increase, at 16 it's meh. The best part about Aghanim is the3 slashes adds potential to do 3 more attacks which is where the realdamage can really start to kick in.

If you compare for example to an item like Deso at level 11, each adds~2200 damage. This is due for many reasons. First, the stats of Aghsincreases a hero's dps by a microscopic amount. Second, the increased

attacks only make a difference if your attacks hurt (see first point). Lastly

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attacks only make a difference if your attacks hurt (see first point). Lastlythe extra slashes is static damage that's never going to get better. Inmany ways,Aghs peaks whereas Deso actually continues to scale (as does any otheritem he purchases).

At 12 slashes, to maximize your extra attacks you need seconds/attack tobe less than 0.4 which means you need over 300 ias. As the whole point ofaghs is to beef up your ultimate, there's no reason not to. That leavesLightning (+80) Butterfly (+60) Manta (+41) Eblade (+40) AC (+55) Lothars(+30) MKB (+15) Treads (+30) Orchid (+30) SnY (+32) more or less yourchoices. You'll probably want Travels, and you need Aghanims, whichmeans from 4 items you need 182 more ias (45.5/item). Butterfly has to goin, Lightning would probably help as well. If you went Manta, EBlade, orAC, you could then go Deso to maximize potency, however since we'recomparing Aghanim to Deso we won't. Instead let's give him Butterfly,Lightning, Manta, and MKB. For Deso (keep in mind just Ult boosting) let'scompare BoT, Deso, Butterfly, Lightning, MKB, and AC/Eblade. The AghanimOmnislash is ~12470, Deso/AC is ~12500, Deso/Eblade ~12300. So Aghsmakes literally no difference except in reducing the cooldown. So in onebuild you have far superior right clicks and far superior contributionsoutside your ult, and then there's the aghs build.Conclusion is that Aghanim actually isn't that good on Juggernaut.

As such there are any other amount of items that should be purchasedfirst.

Newb Mistakes

This section compiles any Item/Hero combination that seems like it isgood when in reality, it really isn't. It in fact hurts your game more thanhelps it.

Show

+

A seemingly first bought item on Meepo at 6 so that he can jungleindefinitely for 25 minutes only to get stomped all over because he didn'tend the game in time. Meepo's power is overleveling, surprise poofinitiation, and ending the game early. Vlads accomplishes none of thosethings; in fact Meepo rarely is auto­attacking in a team fight.A better choice:

BlinkAghsMekPipe

+ +

Strictly speaking, the Goblin does not attack. His ultimate (a veryspammable high damage nuke) makes him unable to attack. As such,picking up items from those two stores (in other words, DPS items) is atotal wasteA better choice:

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+ +

Similar to the Goblin, the huge problem with Panda is that new players seehis steroid skill and assume to build DPS items on him completely missingjust how broken his ultimate is and how is ultimate makes him unable touse any of those DPS items.A better choice:

Dagger for positioningAghanim's Scepter is amazingAura's work on your Earth Panda

verse

The issue with Naix is his feast ability. You may see him and know that heis a dps carry type hero, however the large part of his damage comes fromyou having a larger health pool ironically. Thus, buying a Heart when thereis an enemy Naix is just about the worse thing you can buy.A better choice:

Armor works against FeastGhost makes him unable to hit youForce keeps you away from himRaw dps items instead of strength dps items

+ +

The Skeleton King already gets a super beefy lifesteal aura of 30%. Sodon't stack lifesteal on him! In particular, Vlads can be picked up by asupport and Satanic is just overkill. There are some situations where Hotdcan be used to stack ancients and MoM can be a cheap ias substitute, butmostly, you're better off buying almost anything else.A better choice:

BkBArmletMKBDesoLightning

BEFORE

A problem of new players is they often overexaggerate their health andmana pools. How many times do you see a new player go in for a gank onlyto be just a little too short of mana? Someone died because they werejust a bit too weak to sustain the burn from doom? This is becauseoftentimes people purchase the Regen before the Pool. Simply put, itdoesn't matter how much regen you have when you are 2­3 shotted. A700 health, 500 mana pool Leshrac with a Pers offers quite a bit less thanthe 900 health, 750 mana pool Leshrac who has a point booster andarcane boots. Remember kids, boost your pool first then get the regen

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+ #5 Supports

Watching some of Purge's pubcasts really showcased this point. A WL whowas playing a number 5 was building slowly into an Aghs. He managed tocomplete it at minute 37 when the game ended 3 minutes later. No doubtAghs is powerful on WL, but not at minute 37. More to the point, his teamlacked basic support items like Urn, MoC, Mek, and Pipe. Pipe naturally ismore expensive but it proves an important point. If you're playing a #4 or#5 and are experiencing very low gpm, don't aim for big expensive items.Aim instead, for something small.A better choice:

Not Buying On Illusions

A common misconception is that you should only buy stat items on heroeswith illusions since illusions only get stats, raw hp/mp, movespeed items,evasion, crit, or feedback on melee heroes; so people pass on the aboveitems in favor of Eblade or Butterfly for example.

This is not always the case though. Illusions are meant to confuse andmislead opponents, not always to do immense amounts of damage meaningthat foregoing stat items in terms for raw dps items is a certainly viablechoice (ie Terrorblade going BkB/Buriza/Lighting over Skadi/Manta).

In the case of Phantom Lancer, it's even more a misconception as heactually relies very heavily on his images. However, assume you haveTravels/Heart/Butterfly/Diffusal, what should round out your items?Guinsoos and Manta are certainly excellent choices, but what aboutBuriza? Raw damage means nothing for images so forego it right? No.Rounding out those items with Manta/Buriza actually is more image dpsthan rounding out with Manta/Eblade (Eblade giving the most agility). Ifyou compare Diffusal/Eblade against Diffusal/Buriza, you see the dps is~the same (at level 25 it's about 7 damage).

In conclusion it's perfectly acceptable to buy raw damage on imageheroes.

+

Probably the most commonly purchased item for Pudge. New players seeRot and instantly think, "Oh noes! I need more magic resistanceszz!" Letme explain to you: you don't.

For starters, Pudge has an excellent ability in Flesh Heap that alreadygives Pudge more magic resistance. That alone means Hood only offers19% reduction as opposed to 30% due to their interactions (1­a)(1­b)(1­c)...

Next, magic damage is mostly static. Spells have cooldowns (some verylong) meaning the initial barrage which may or may not hit Pudge, will takesome time to be able to be cast again. Rot's damage is static, onlychanging in how long you actually Rot.

When you combine those two things and then look at Pudge's trueweakness (his armor) there should be a conclusion in your mind. Don't buymore magic resistance, buy an item that really does help him.A better choice:

Vanguard offers health, regen, and damage block for the low

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Vanguard offers health, regen, and damage block for the lowarmor PudgeBkB components, BkB stops Rot from hurting him and allows forDismember to channel for it's full 3 secondsAghs components, Aghs is a nice upgrade to Pudge

Show an even longer explanation of why Hood is bad on Pudge

This argument is pulled from here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by No_Worries Here's the best way to explain this. If you're buying a Hood to negate Rot'sdamage, you're doing it wrong.

Hood saves you from 21 dps from Rot. As established, you need 10seconds of Rot damage to deal more than what the Vanguard offers you.

Something you're completely overlooking the fact Vanguard gives 28damage block on average.

Here's something else fun too. Assume Pudge is being attacked twice asecond (I think a fair estimate). Now let's plug numbers in and see whatpops out when given x number of nukes Pudge has to endure (I'm usingthe standard 300 damage nuke and Pudge is rotting the entire time)

If Pudge takes 3 nukes, Vanguard offers more after 5 secondsIf Pudge takes 4 nukes, Vanguard is better after 9

Maybe that's unrealistic. Ideally the entire team is attacking him to bringhis fat ass down. Bump it up to 5 aps

If Pudge gets blasted with 3 nukes, Vanguard offers more after 1.5secondsIf Pudge gets blasted with 6 nukes, Vanguard is better after 5seconds

Is this making sense to you? With 16% MR, Pudge already stands a goodchance against casting! The nukes are limited, attacks are not. It's goingto take more autoattacks to defeat Pudge! Still not convinced? Pudgecould get blasted with 10 nukes, that's an oustanding 1350 base damage+21 dps from Rot. Vanguard will pass that up in 7.5/9.5/12/17 secondsgiven 6/5/4/3 attacks per second in terms of health saved. That's huge!This shows that even when faced with an onslaught of magic damage,Vanguard STILL offers more health benefits when trying to be broughtdown EVEN when Pudge is rotting himself to death!

BUT MAYBE YOU'RE STILL NOT CONVINCED

Let's compare the Hood against the Vanguard straight up. One has 0.4515

magic reduction and no damage block, the other has 0.645 magic

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magic reduction and no damage block, the other has 0.645 magicreduction with the 28 damage block per average hit. Assume the attackingheroes do about 100 (might be more in some cases maybe less). Assumeeach nuke to be 300 damage (what might be called the standard).

Attacks Per Second Spells Cast Damage Point

2 2 4

2 4 7

2 10 19

3 3 3

3 7 7

3 10 10

4 4 3

4 8 6

4 12 8

5 12 6

6 6 3

6 12 5

The Damage Point is the number of seconds at which a Vanguard has beendealt less damage than the Hood. Now do me a favor and look at thattable, and try to still justify that a Hood keeps Pudge around rotting longerthan a Vanguard. Because you can't. Even when facing an extraordinaryamount of nukes (in some of those examples, 12 or 3600 spell damage)the Vanguard still proves more useful in keeping Pudge alive!

Conclusion, Vanguard > Hood on Pudge, end of story

Flat out just bad

This section could be combined with Newb mistakes. The difference hereis these combinations, are just bad, for the reasons outlined below

Show

+Any Ranged Hero

With an average damage block of 14, you're dumping 2225 for 250 healthwhich is a complete joke

In fact, Ken tells me it's actually 60% because of War3 meaning youactually get just 12 damage block...A better choice:

PMS+TB+Vit gives same benefits and can still upgrade the VitSange gives more health, a disable, and can be upgraded

+ + +Any Hero

These are all great early game items. The issue is when you buy 2­3 ofthese items. Hands is a great farming tool, use it to fund large purchases!MoM is a great steroid, buy it early then buy something that abuses it'sattack speed! Armlet is probably the greatest mid­game item for someheroes. Buying it after any of those items however significantly weakens it.Rule of thumb: buy one of those 3 if you plan too; don't buy anycombination of them.

A better choice:

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A better choice:

Mask of Madness ­­> BkB/CritArmlet ­­> BkB/Crit/DamageHands ­­> Big Items

Show why the degen effects aren't a problem with MoM

MoM enhances damage taken but Armlet is HP removal which is not in any wayeffected

+

Really, anything here could be listed as a bad item on Xin and that isbecause of just how powerful Sleight of Fists is. The reason Hyperstone(AC/Mojin) are called out is because of how useless attack speed is onXin. Sleight of Fists is a low cd MASSIVE damage dealing ability that hitsevery target and requires Xin to have no attack speed to still do massivedamage.A better choice:

+ OR OR OR

Really, SnY is bad on MOST heroes. However, on these four, it'sparticularly terrible due to the added movespeed offering them very little.Gondar with Track gets very close to max, Bloodseeker does with Thirst asdoes Clinkz and WW. On SB, not only does his Charge not care for what hisbase movespeed is, but he has Empowering Haste which is more thanenough of a boost.

Bloodseeker has received a change in that he no longer caps withmovespeed. However, is 600, 700, or 800 movespeed necessary? He canachieve that without SnY. Moreover, the SnY is still only a 12% bonus(about 60 movespeed). There is no change.What is a better choice? Almost anything

Not having

Another Purge suggestion. Watched an entire replay where the Sent didnot buy a Chick despite having amply supports/opportunity/gold. It reallydoes make a huge difference.

Another fine example, is not crowing it in time. Sending out items without

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Another fine example, is not crowing it in time. Sending out items withoutit being crowed is just terrible. Your animal is far more easy to kill not tomention it takes forever for your items to get there. Participated in a gamerecently where the support got firstblood, but rather than use some ofthat money to buy the crow upgrade, he rushed arcane. It took the othersupport (who was taking his role far more seriously) 5 minutes to scrapetogether 250 gold for his crow. Get that crow!

Rushing

Boots of Travel are pretty much core on every hero in the lategame.However, the biggest mistake any hero can make (save Tinker and Meepo)is dumping the 2k into the recipe for Boots of Travel. While it may saveyou 500­1000 gold in a long game, it's how terrible you are despite havinga 2k gold advantage already. In the early game if you get early goldadvantage, dump it into something that really gives you an advantage.Drum/MoC/Urn/Wards/Bracers are all far better choices

+

There are a few issues with Eblade. The first being that HP removal is notenhanced by ethereal. Second is Bloodseeker cannot attack an etherealtarget. Lastly, an 80% slow is absolutely counter­intuitive to Rupture.A better choice:

Dagon for nuking powerForce Staff for nuking powerButterfly for raw dps

Post if you have an example. Also, please refrain from stupid examples such as 6xitem on a hero. Obviously you wouldn't buy 6x dagon on anyone

Special thanks to everyone who posted here to establish the aghs section.

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