History Characters / Dota2DireStrength

* NoNameGiven

* GrandTheftMe[=/=]MindControl: After casting ''Infest'' on a unit that is not an allied hero, Lifestealer can take direct control of it via the sub-ability ''Control'', giving him access to its movement and abilities. Even more, the unit will still appear normal to enemies (neutral creeps will still appear as neutral, and their lane creeps or summoned units will not switch sides), giving Lifestealer the element of surprise, although enemy players can still attack the unit in question once Lifestealer has control of it once they realize that he's inside.

* HunterOfHisOwnKind: In a meta sense. ''Feast'' makes Lifestealer, a tanky hero with high HP, a good counter to other tanky heroes.

* KingMook

* TheNightThatNeverEnds: Towards the end of the game, Night Stalker can pretty much continually cast ''Darkness'', allowing night to advance 40 seconds at a time (game day and night last 4 minutes each), meaning that enemy heroes can no longer take advantage of his weakness in the day.

* NamesToRunAwayFromVeryFast: Chaos Knight's horse is named Armageddon.

** VampiricDraining

* SquishyWizard[=/=]GlassCannon: Despite being a Strength hero with fairly high Strength growth, his low ''base'' Strength leaves him very fragile for most of the game when compared to other Strength heroes, and even various Intelligence and Agility heroes have higher HP than him. He makes up for this with sheer magical damage output, manoeuvrability with ''Burrowstrike'' and the ability to avoid attacks with ''Sand Storm''.

* ImplacableMan: Tidehunter's passive, ''Kraken Shell'', gives him passive damage block (at max level, it's essentially a free Vanguard) and will remove most debuffs once he takes a certain amount of player damage within a short duration. This includes even stuns (except for ground-targeted ones like Jakiro's ''Ice Path''), one of the very few abilities that do so, making Tidehunter one of the few heroes in the game that cannot be chain-stunned.

* MightyGlacier: By the time Ostarion gets his Armlet, he becomes a pain to kill, yet can easily do so to his opponents. His primary weakness however is his rather low movement speed that allows easy kiting if he doesn't have the mana for ''Wraithfire Blast''.

* SkillGateCharacter: Despite being designated as a carry, the Wraith King carry build plays this straight. Wraith King has one of the highest win rates in pub games: ''Vampiric Aura'''s 30% lifesteal aura is absurdly powerful in a common pub 5-carry team (even Satanic only gives 25% lifesteal). Another factor in his winrate is the poor communication between players as to when ''Reincarnation'' is/isn't on cooldown. If you pop an enemy Wraith ult in the early game for example, it's a good idea to tell your team so they can use this knowledge to their advantage, which is something that people don't seem to do. However, he lacks the mobility of other melee carries (Anti-Mage, Slardar,...), he doesn't have teamfight or powerful skills (Spectre, Lifestealer,...), and he is too easily kitable. Because of this, whenever he is played competitively, he is either played as a support or as an offlaner buying utility items, acting as an initiator.

Night Stalker is a unique hero- he is the only hero who relies on the in-game day/night cycle to maximize his effectiveness. Although he's slow-moving and has poor vision in the daytime, when the sun goes down Balanar undergoes a transformation; nighttime boosts his speed, attacks, vision range and the potency of his spells- and since most heroes have reduced nighttime vision, it provides Night Stalker the ability to gank from unexpected angles. His primary damaging spell, ''Void'', deals damage, mini-stuns, and slows the target; the slow duration gets increased at night. His second active ability, ''Crippling Fear'' silences the target and increases its chance to miss physical attacks; when used in conjunction with ''Void'', Night Stalker can pin any target down to finish them off, since this debuff also lasts longer at night. His passive, ''Hunter in the Night'', is his most important ability, boosting his movement and attack speed during the nighttime. His ultimate, ''Darkness'', can temporarily turn day into night or extend nighttime's duration, depending on when it is used, allowing for surprise ganks, escapes, or prolonged fights. Aghahim's Scepter grants him unobstructed vision at night, granting him almost complete map control so long as the sun is down. Balanar may be at his most vulnerable in the daytime, but when the sun falls... every hero should fear the dark.

* CastingAShadow: His ultimate, ''Darkness'', instantly turns day into night, or stops time from moving if it's already night, essentially extending the length of nighttime, and reduces the vision range of all non-building enemies by 25%. In addition, ''Void'' and ''Crippling Fear'' are both themed around darkness and fear.

* RandomizedDamageAttack: Chaos Knight's right-click attacks have the highest in the game (30), and ''Chaos Bolt'' inflicts a random but inversely-related amount of damage and stun. Upgrading the spell increases both the maximum and minimum values of both the damage and stun, but there's still a big difference between a 275 damage skill that stuns for 2 seconds, and one that does 100 and stuns for 4.

** It's the ''only'' spell that goes through Dazzle's ''Shallow Grave'', which otherwise grants complete immunity to death (except against self-triggered suicide from Techies' ''Suicide Squad, Attack!'' and Bloodstone's ''Pocket Suicide''). It's also one of two spells that can kill Abaddon through ''Borrowed Time'' (the other being Ancient Apparition's ''Ice Blast''), which otherwise heals Abaddon when he should take damage.

* AwesomeButImpractical: ''Caustic Finale'' causes enemies attacked by Sand King to violently explode, dealing 220 area damage at level 4. Sounds awesome, but in practice not so much. Early game, ''Caustic Finale'' can be used to bully a melee offlaner out of lane, but it also pushes the lane, making it hard for your carry to farm, and ''Sand Storm'' is much better to flash-farm a Blink Dagger, since its invisibility, cheap mana cost and good damage allows Sand King to jungle safely and effectively - if he stacks neutrals correctly he can get Blink Dagger in 10 minutes. Later on, ''Caustic Finale'''s small [=AoE=] makes it hard to land against competent opponents, it does not synergise with the standard ''Epicenter'' into ''Burrowstrike'' combo (which can kill most if not all creeps in a teamfight, leaving none for ''Caustic Finale''), restricting its usage to farming and pushing, for which Sand King has ''Sand Storm'' which can clear creeps just as fast. Because of this, ''Caustic Finale'' is almost always ignored by pros, who choose to get stats to bolster Sand King's weak HP pool instead of investing in a largely redundant skill.

* MightyGlacier: With ''Kraken Shell'' and a respectable strength growth he becomes very tough to kill.

** The item "Magic Stick" costs 200 gold and all it does is replenish health and mana based on its charges. That's why its an amazing item for Wraith King early game, so he can spam Wraithfire Blast as much as he wants and replenish his mana with the stick as he's about to use Reincarnation.

* MagicKnight: With enough mana, Wraith King can belt out a surprisingly large number of ''Wraithfire Blasts'' in between swings of his sword, thanks to it's low cooldown. Indeed, he's largely in the background for most of the early game, throwing out stuns and supplying his aura rather than going in himself [[MagikarpPower as he doesn't have the ability to win fights just yet]].

* TheBerserker: ''Rage''

* HunterOfHisOwnKind: In a meta sense. He's an effective counter to high-hp tanky heroes, which he rips apart with gusto, yet he himself is often a very high-hp tanky hero.

* AchillesHeel: The only thing that can stop Doom's ultimate is a Linken's Sphere. While Doom can counter this by casting ''LVL? Death'' on the target beforehand, this can make or break an initiation since the very first spell cast can change the entire dynamic of a teamfight, and giving the enemy that fraction of a second can give them a solid advantage.

* [[EvilCounterpart Neutral Counterpart]]: Of Lone Druid. Both of them can summon animals to help them, have abilities that increase their attack speed and damage, and use their ultimates to transform into animal {{Super Mode}}s. However, while Banehallow is a LightningBruiser without much armor or survivability, Sylla is a MightyGlacier without much in the way of speed. Ironically, Banehallow is a Strength hero and Sylla is an Agility hero.
** Despite their allegiances in-game Banehallow is an somewhat rude, yet agreeable person, while Sylla is quite literally attempting to cause TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.

* DiscOneNuke: ''Wraithfire Blast'' is the strongest single-target stun at level 1, with 2 seconds of stun, followed by 2 seconds of 20% slow and 80 damage, with a 525 cast range. It's very easy to rack up a ton of early game kills with ''Wraithfire Blast'' so long as you are active on the map and roaming around helping out all 3 lanes.

* ForMassiveDamage: ''Mortal Strike'' is arguably the second most powerful critical strike ability in the game (beat by Phantom Assassin's ultimate). This allows Wraith King to scale very well with damage items without having to build a Daedalus.

* TestosteronePoisoning: Alongside Axe, he's considered the manliest hero in Dota, a sentiment certainly aided by [[http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=128711900 this guide]].

** [[http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/c/ca/Skg_kill_09.mp3 "You were expecting...]] [[WesternAnimation/NightmareBeforeChristmas Sandy Claws?]]

* AwesomeEgo: For his redesign in 2013, Valve deliberately played up his arrogance and boastful tendencies. This went down quite well with the fans.

* GrandTheftMe: Of a sort, the wizard now shares a body with N'aix, although he originally intended to steal the body outright.

* GameFace: When night falls, Night Stalker's face become much more monstrous.

* NightmareFace: During the night, his face splits to reveal a maw with three jaws.
* TheNightThatNeverEnds: Towards the end of the game, Night Stalker can pretty much continually cast ''Darkness'', allowing night to advance 40 seconds at a time (game day and night last 4 minutes each), meaning that enemy heroes can no longer take advantage of his weakness in the day.

* TimedMission: Night Stalker is a very risky hero to play due to this. Before patch 6.79, when the day-night cycle was 6 minutes, Night Stalker would almost guaranteed hit level 6 or 7 before the first night fell, giving him access to his ulti and possibly a fully-maxed ''Void'' to use to roam to a different lane and get kills. However, when the day-night cycle was shifted to 4 minutes, he would have trouble reaching even level 5 at that point, making him a much smaller threat (and would likely be even lower than that due to already having a laning disadvantage because he's a melee hero). And then by the time he does reach level 7, the night is already mostly over and he has at best two minutes to roam and gank before daylight hits.

* LightningBruiser: Possesses the second highest natural move speed, and his ''Reality Rift'' lets him jump right into an enemy. He also has a fairly high Agility gain for a Strength hero, and the resulting increase in attack speed makes his ''Chaos Strike'' more common, increasing his damage output even more.

* SpamAttack: At max levels, ''Decay'' drops down to a cooldown of 4 seconds, while ''Soul Rip'' has a cooldown of 6. With a large enough mana pool and a big enough pool of units under ''Soul Rip'''s radius (more often than not zombies from ''Tombstone''), Undying can steal an absurd amount of Strength, and drop 500 HP nukes/heals every 6 seconds.

* ShoutOut: Aside from being based on the [[Literature/TheBible Biblical]] [[{{Satan}} Lucifer]], he also has references to FinalFantasy like the "oddly" named ''LVL? Death''.

* AscendedMeme: On purchasing a Divine Rapier, he mentions that he is '''"[[http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/a/ae/Wraith_items_18.mp3 BALLING OUT OF CONTROL!]]"''', a reference to the infamous "[[http://www.playdota.com/guides/epic-return CAPS LOCK LEORIC]]" guide. And yes, [[PaintingTheMedium it is in all caps in the subtitles]].

* TheDreaded: A good Night Stalker player could inspire fear all over the other team with this mindset: you are the strongest, fastest, most powerful and deadliest hero in the game so make them suffer, make them play worried of being ganked, make them play fearing being raped every second, in every corner, on every shadow. This is NOT true. You're not the strongest, maybe you're the fastest but this is what THEY must think about you. Play with your brain and the game is yours. By doing this they won't properly farm, they will feel discouraged and inevitably they will lose the game.

* TheDreaded: According to his lore, he's been terrifying generations of children since civilization began. In the game, he can frighten his enemies into submission with ''Crippling Fear''.

* MagicKnight: His base damage and attack speed are both mediocre, but he makes up for it with his massive spell damage; ''Epicenter'' alone can melt an entire team if they're not prepared.

* OvershadowedByAwesome: ''Caustic Finale'', an attack modifier that causes enemies affected by it to violently explode upon death. On paper, it's a good farming and pushing skill, but in practice, ''Sand Storm''

* WingsDoNothing: Somewhat averted; although at daytime they are useless, at nighttime while Hunter in the Night is active his wings flap every now and then, but he remains grounded. Only when he activates the Haste rune does he actually take off the ground.

* PowerNullifier: His ultimate, ''Doom'', is a much more potent version of a silence, disabling items on top of the target's ability to cast, all on top of inflicting damage over time, and lasts extremely long (15 seconds) compared to similar hard disables like stuns or hexes. It is universally regarded as one of the hardest disables in the game, and it's often joked that it counters every single hero in the game because of this.
** Aghanim's Scepter takes this UpToEleven. Normally, ''Doom'' is not perfectly effective against certain targets who have passive abilities and items that allow them to keep fighting even if they can't cast anything or use their item's active abilities (a Phantom Assassin with levels in ''Blur'' can still evade attacks, which can stack with the evasion from Butterfly, and can still inflict crits from ''Coup de Grace'', all on top of still being able to passively lifesteal from their Satanic if they have one). However, if Doom has an Aghanim's Scepter, all options go out the window, since not only can PA not evade right-clicks anymore, right-clicking enemies doesn't work either since she won't be able to crit or lifesteal either.

* FoeTossingCharge: ''Charge of Darkness'' will cause Spirit breaker to run through anything and everything, homing in on the target from any place on the map, knocking back any opponent he passes through.

* MasterOfNone: 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, Skewer's 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.

* JackOfAllStats: Depending on his item build, Abaddon can fulfil just about any role on a team, acting as a support, tank, or carry with his versatile and adaptable skill build.

* StoneWall: Even when not building specifically to tank, 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.

* ExactWords: Patch 6.79 allows him to purchase Blink Dagger, but grants free pathing for anyone he trapped in cliffs or ledges. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3FA_5BhIT4&list=UUlp9gv5pDeltRvfPhb_f5ig&index=4 But no one said anything about ''trees''....]]

* MutualDisadvantage: Against Dazzle. On one hand, Axe is the only hero in the game that can ignore Dazzle's ''Shallow Grave'' with his ultimate ''Culling Blade''. On the other hand, 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''. ''Weave'' also hurts Axe hard, as it boosts enemy armor, weakening ''Counter Helix'', while reducing his armor, which really hurts a tanky hero like him.

* BetterToDieThanToBeKilled[=/=]TooDumbToLive: The self-damage from ''Mist Coil'' can actually kill Abaddon if his health is below the cost of the spell, so bad players can accidentally kill themselves or smart players can take advantage of it to deny themselves. Abaddon even has special voice lines for when he achieves this.