History Characters / Dota2StrengthAToM

** In 7.29, in addition to giving him the ability to leap through great distances, ''Enchanted Totem'' allows his next attack to cleave through the enemy when Earthshaker holds an Aghanim Scepter. Come 7.30e, the attack no longer applies cleave to Ranged Heroes. This change does not affect Earthshaker in any way but is instead specifically targeted towards Morphling that Morphed into the former in order to deter the latter from dealing tremendous amounts of splash damage using the copied ''Enchant Totem'' ability.

* EvolvingWeapon: ''Tidebringer'' is both Kunkka's weapon and a levellable passive ability.

* CoolHelmet
* DarkIsEvil

* ImprobableWeaponUser: He calls his weapon a [[CarryABigStick "cudgel"]], though it has one end curved into a [[HooksAndCrooks hook]] and SpikesOfVillainy on the opposite and perpendicular sides.

* LifeDrain: Upon proccing, ''Chaos Strike'' grants the triggering attack lifesteal.
* LightningBruiser: Possesses one of the highest base movement speeds, and his ''Reality Rift'' lets him jump right into an enemy. Being a Strength hero, he has a lot of health, and ''Chaos Strike'' grants him a boost to his damage and survivability thanks to the critical hit and lifesteal it provides.

* BrutishCharacterBrutishWeapon: Centaurs are a ProudWarriorRace who [[BloodKnight live to fight]], and Bradwarden is no different. He wields a huge axe, with one of his moves having him swing it so hard that [[CastFromHitPoints he hurts himself in the process]].

* BrutishCharacterBrutishWeapon: Axe is a savage Oglodi warlord, belonging to what's basically the ''Dota 2'' equivalent of orcs. His weapon of choice, a large axe which [[CompanionCube he talks about as if it were alive]], reflects this.

* CripplingOverspecialization: The huge DPS that Huskar deals comes at the expense of all utility - his heal is subpar for most heroes who are dead meat at low hp and burns up his mana, even with no other skills competing for it, and his slow requires a serious amount of health and is an all-or-nothing move.

* GlassCannon: Huskar becomes this late game. His damage output is still high, but ''Berserker's Blood'' becomes less useful alongside nukes, and the enemy team's main damage source becomes their carry's right-clicks, which will kill Huskar in a second because of his abysmal armour.

* ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman: The ''Berserker's Blood'' rework in 7.20 (which replaced its magic resistance bonus with health regeneration) is supposed to mitigate this problem, as prior to this patch Huskar only saw use in professional games as a surprise last pick against magic-heavy teams, as due to ''Berserker's Blood'' he was all but unkillable by such teams (especially when combined with Dazzle or Oracle), but only one serious right-clicker could make his life a living hell (due to his lack of armour and tendency to remain at low HP).

* ViolationOfCommonSense: Huskar is at his best when he's at low health. ''Burning Spear'' can quickly eat up Huskar's health. As a result, most Huskar players use ''Burning Spear'' to intentionally nearly kill themselves in order to maximize his damage potential. Likewise, ''Life Break'' is often used to insert Huskar into situations that most heroes would usually run from, such as initiating against a hero that has much more health than he does.

* YouAreAlreadyDead: ''Burning Spear'' can do up to 140 magic damage per stack, spread out over 7 seconds, and stacks every time the victim is hit with ''Burning Spear'' activated and it cannot be removed ''at all''. Combined with Huskar's lightning fast attack speed with ''Berserker's Blood'', enemies who have no way to quickly heal or dispel the status effect are very likely to succumb even if they manage to escape or kill Huskar. Furthermore, Huskar's ultimate ''Life Break'' - when used properly - has the potential to be SO incredibly devastating and crippling to its target that being hit with it is often a death sentence for most heroes; [[http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=128817857 a popular guide to Huskar]] describes it best:

* ChainLethalityEnabler: ''Culling Blade'' only goes on cooldown if it fails to finish off its target (or if Axe uses it on a non-hero unit, including couriers). Otherwise, if there are multiple low-HP enemies grouped together, Axe can chain ''Culling Blade'' to score multi-kills and harvest a fair bit of permanent armor.

* FinishingMove: ''Culling Blade'' is designed to finish off enemies, since a kill with it gives all nearby allies a speed boost, resets its cooldown, and gives Axe a permanent bonus to his armor. Older versions would simply deal minor damage if the victim is not below a certain health threshold, but if they were, ''Culling Blade'' would kill instead.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: No matter what element his dragon form's normal BreathWeapon takes, he always uses fire breath with ''Breathe Fire''. 7.33 also made it apply the debuffs of his ''Elder Dragon Form'', which in turn leads to him somehow freezing people by breathing fire at them.

* HornedHumanoid: With the Stoneforged Horns cosmetic head item. Unlike Earthshaker's other head items, this one is not a hat, but actual horns.

* DamageIncreasingDebuff: Elder Titan's third ability and passive, ''Natural Order'', reduces the base armor and any armor gained through Agility of any nearby enemy to zero, on top of effectively nullifying their base magic resistance. This makes him an extremely powerful counter against Agility carries, who tend to rely on their Agility-boosted armor to reduce incoming physical damage, tend not to have the largest health pools due to not being Strength heroes, and are generally already weak against magic nukes anyways.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: No matter what element his dragon form's normal BreathWeapon takes, he always uses fire breath with ''Breathe Fire'', although 7.33 also made it apply the debuffs of his ''Elder Dragon Form''.

* DropTheHammer: Her weapon of choice is the Brightmaul.

* MoneyMultiplier: ''Devour'' gives Doom bonus unreliable gold with every creep he eats after a short delay. It's one of reasons why Doom can be dangerous to leave alone to farm by himself despite the rest of his skill set, since if he can farm an early Hand of Midas, he can get out of control with his XP and gold gain.

* TelephonePolearm: Not only his [[DropTheHammer hammer]], but an even bigger totem on his back.

* NoIndoorVoice

* StoneWall: As the game progresses, Axe's role changes into this: because of the bad scaling on his skills, by late game enemies can shrug his damage off with ease. By this time Axe is no longer a damage dealer, but remains useful as a disabler.

* LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: With ''Bulwark'', Mars uses his shield to block attacks, though it can't protect him from behind.

* ShieldBash: ''God's Rebuke'' is a shield swing which pushes enemies away.

* AchillesHeel: Anyone who can easily kill illusions regularly will reduce Chaos Knight's effectiveness greatly, as his main damage steroids is ''Phantasm'', an illusion ability with a long cooldown. Medusa and Lion, with Aghanim's for the former and certain talents for the latter, are some of the good choices for dealing against CK. [[RemovedAchillesHeel No longer the case]] after Strong Illusions were introduced to the game, which ''Phantasm'' illusions are.

* EliteArmy: ''Phantasm'' illusions are much more powerful than any other illusions in the game at max level and immune to abilities that instantly kill illusions, but compared to other illusion-creating abilities, it has a much longer cooldown. ''Phantasm'' use will often revolve around keeping them alive to do as much damage as possible instead of throwing them away in droves like other illusion heroes.

* AchillesHeel: Dragon Knight is very dependent on ''Elder Dragon Form'' to perform well, meaning he's only online half the time and making Aegis and buyback minimally effective[[note]]However, it makes the Cheese that Roshan drops a very good option for him, meaning another teammate can take the Aegis[[/note]].

* AnIcePerson: When ''Elder Dragon Form'' is maxed, the level 3 Blue Dragon's attacks also slow enemies' move and attack speed.

* EliteArmy: ''Phantasm'' illusions are much more powerful than any other illusions in the game at max level and immune to abilities that instantly kill illusions, but it has an obscene 140-second cooldown.

Dragon Knight's durability and strength is rivalled only by a handful of other heroes, and few of them can outfight a well-played Davion on the offensive. Unlike other melee carries who are vulnerable in the early game, Dragon Knight can mitigate this weakness with his passive skill ''Dragon Blood'', giving him a permanent armor boost as well as buff to his natural health regeneration, meaning that he can farm with impunity for much of the early game. His two main damaging spells ''Breathe Fire'' and ''Dragon Tail'' . '' Breathe Fire'' deals magic damage in a line, and ''Dragon Tail'' causes Dragon Knight's next attack to stun a single target in melee range. Dragon Knight's real offensive power lies with his ultimate, ''Elder Dragon Form''. Activating this spell temporarily turns the knight into a powerful dragon for sixty seconds, temporarily boosting damage and turning his all of his attacks and ''Dragon Tail'' into ranged damage and giving his attacks a temporary attack modifier which transitions from early game pushing power to late game teamfight dominance as he levels the ability, giving Dragon Knight ample time to tear his enemies apart. As the spell levels up, Dragon Knight will alter his Dragon Form into one of three variants, each getting more powerful and adding more debuffs as he levels it up. The first is a green dragon with ''Corrosive Breath'', which causes poison damage over time. His second form is a red dragon with a splash attack that deals damage to everyone around him, and keeps ''Corrosive Breath'' in this form as well. His third form, a blue dragon, keeps his splash attack and poison damage and adds a slow effect that hits all enemies in the splash radius. Aghanim's Scepter allows him to access a fourth form, a black dragon with greater poison, splash, and slow powers, as well as increased range and great magic resistance.\\

* AchillesHeel: Dragon Knight is very dependent on ''Elder Dragon Form'' to perform well, meaning he's only online half the time and making Aegis and buyback minimally effective[[note]]However, it makes the Cheese that Rohan drops a very good option for him, meaning another teammate can take the Aegis[[/note]].

** Huskar is heavily reliant on self-healing via health regeneration (which he gets from Berserker's Blood), lifesteal, and toggling the Armlet of Mordiggian to keep his health at the perfect spot where he benefits from increased attack speed without being at risk of being burst down. A Spirit Vessel lowers all healing received, greatly lowering his ability to survive fights, while Ancient Apparition's ''Ice Blast'' not only removes his ability to gain HP at all, it also kills him instantly when his health drops below a certain threshold, which he will likely reach if his health was already low.
** Large amounts of burst damage, such as Lion or Lina's ultimates, can kill Huskar outright once his health is low enough, giving his health regen no chance to work.

* AntiMagic: Before its rework, ''Berserker's Blood'' gave Huskar bonus magic resistance, allowing him to easily shrug off nukes at low health.

* PracticalTaunt: With Aghanim's Scepter, ''Life Break'' taunts the target, forcing them to attack Huskar.

* WeaksauceWeakness: Anything that deals burst damage. Literally ''anything,'' whether it's Physical, Magical, or Pure. As his survivability at low health comes entirely from regeneration, and he has almost no armor and only the base magic resistance, putting out a lot of damage in a short time will drop Huskar. This presents a problem for him in the late game, as most carries will be packing enough damage to slaughter him in a straight fight.

* CriticalHitClass: While Kunkka has no natural ability to crit, ''Tidebringer'' splashes all enemies in front of him with 100% cleave damage (meaning that it ignores armor). This means that smart Kunkka players will abuse this by building, a Daedalus (or two) to inflict critical hits (and increase the chances of landing a crit if more than one is bought), a Shadow Blade to initiate (and to apply the 175-bonus damage), and damage items to increase his raw attack power. A lucky crit that also procs ''Tidebringer'' will deal a massive crit damage to all targets in an area, potentially resulting in a TotalPartyKill.

** In previous versions, Cleave damage was based on the armor of the primary target. This meant that, with ''Tidebringer'' ready, hitting a low-armor target such as a creep would sometimes end up doing more damage than actually attacking an enemy hero (of course, you'd have to aim it properly so the enemies actually get hit by the cleave). Later patches made Cleave damage be reduced by the armor of each target individually, making this ineffective.

* ConservationOfNinjutsu: ''Overwhelming Odds'' deals more damage and grants Tresdin more speed for every enemy caught within it.

* SoloClass: Legion Commander's playstyle revolves around solo killing as many enemy heroes as possible with ''Duel'' and snowballing out of control with the bonus damage.

* YouAreAlreadyDead: Killed or gotten away from Doom after he hits you with his titular spell? [[OhCrap Check your health bar.]] ''Doom'' might just deal enough damage to finish you off.

* AsTheGoodBookSays: Upon death, he can sometimes say "The [[IncrediblyLamePun spirit]] is willing, but the flesh is weak."

* BaritoneOfStrength: He is quite the ''[[IncrediblyLamePun ear]]''-shaker.

* CriticalHitClass: While Kunkka has no natural ability to crit, ''Tidebringer'' splashes all enemies in front of him with 100% cleave damage (meaning that it ignores armor). This means that smart Kunkka players will abuse this by building, a Daedalus (or two) to inflict critical hits (and increase the chances of landing a crit if more than one is bought), a Shadow Blade to initiate (and to apply the 175 bonus damage), and damage items to increase his raw attack power. A lucky crit that also procs ''Tidebringer'' will deal a massive crit damage to all targets in an area, potentially resulting in a TotalPartyKill.
--> '''Kunkka, buying Crystalys:''' [[IncrediblyLamePun "Yes, Fish]] [[https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/dota2_gamepedia/b/be/Kunk_item_10.mp3 and Crits!"]]

** ''Tidebringer'' is a powerful area cleave, but is hard to bring off due to it only proccing once every few seconds (meaning that you'll have to refrain from attacking until just the right moment). However, properly used, a smart Kunkka player can use nearby creeps (and even enemy summons in a teamfight) to splash through the enemy's armor and hit the entire enemy team at once. This is lessened with how not many people realize that it's an auto-cast spell that was set on 'on' by default, thus technically they can turn it off when the spell is ready and then fire at will by hitting W on the main target.

* MercyKill: ''Doom'' is one of the very few spells in the game that allows the afflicted hero to be denied by a teammate. In many cases, the only way for a hero to avoid being killed by Doom is to be killed by a teammate instead.

* AchillesHeel: Dragon Knight is very dependent on ''Elder Dragon Form'' to perform well, meaning he's only online half the time and making Aegis and buyback minimally effective.

* SophisticatedAsHell: [[JustForPun Appropriately enough]]. It's worth noting that a large number of his less sophisticated lines actually use the term "hell".

* ChariotPulledByCats: ''Hitch A Ride'' causes Centaur to toss an ally into a cart that manifests from nowhere behind him. While in the cart, the ally can still cast and attack normally, but cannot move independently or be targeted by opponents.

* GlowingEyesOfDoom: [[JustForPun Literally]].

* PowerNullifier: His ultimate, ''Doom'', is a much more potent version of a silence, disabling items on top of the target's ability to cast as well as removing most of their positive buffs, all on top of inflicting damage over time, and lasts extremely long (16 seconds) compared to similar hard disables like stuns or hexes while also completely ignoring debuff immmunity and can't be dispelled by any means whatsoever. ''Doom'' is universally regarded as one of the hardest disables in the game (if not ''the'' hardest), and it's often joked that it counters every single hero in the game because of this. It doesn't innately break passives, but that's where his level 25 talent comes in, shutting down their passives as well. Even buying a Linken's Sphere won't necessarily help you, as Doom can buy an Aghanim's Scepter to turn himself into a WalkingWasteland and have the ''Doom'' effect being applied to anyone close to him without needing to target them (it also has this effect on any enemy target as well, forcing the enemy team to run away from a now-vulnerable teammate). [[MortonsFork This leaves enemies with either the option of attempting to escape Doom and possibly dying anyway, or a desperate attempt to use their right-clicks to fight back, which rarely works against him if he has enough armor.]]

* CloseRangeCombatant: At melee range, Lifestealer can rapidly tear through enemies while rapidly healing himself thanks to ''Feast''. Beyond that, he has absolutely nothing; ''Infest'' has a decent damage radius but the damage is negligible compared to his attacks, and his only gapcloser is ''Open Wounds'' for slowing down a target from range (which in turn requires Aghanim's Shard).

* AchillesHeel: The downside to effectively having Black King Bar as a basic ability instead of an item is that you're in big trouble if the enemy silences you before unleashing their chain of disables. Against enemies like Skywrath Mage, Death Prophet, or anyone with Orchid Malevolence who can do so instantly, Black King Bar might be a worthwhile purchase just to avoid these scenarios.

* CombatPragmatist: Ironically, despite ''Duel'' being framed as an honorable one-on-one fight between Legion Commander and her opponent, her kit is designed to make her ''Duels'' as one-sided as possible. Likewise, savvy Legion Commander players will always be looking for easy ''Duel'' victories whenever possible. In fact, it's not even necessary for LC to be the one that actually kills the opponent; any of their teammates can get the kill, but as long as the opponent is under the effects of ''Duel'' when they die, LC is still declared the "Winner" and gets the damage increase.