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Characters / Dota 2 Agility A To M

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This is part of the character sheet for Dota 2. This page contains the Agility heroes that begins with the letter A to M. Please note that this is sorted not by their real names, but their in-game name, 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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    Anti-Mage 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Anti-Mage_654.png
Voiced by: Sam A. Mowry (original), Laura Bailey (The Disciple's Path persona)

The way of the monks of Turstarkuri is one of meditation, pacifism, and asceticism. Wholly rejecting magic, they remained apathetic to the frequent conflicts in the valleys below their monastery. This ultimately proved to be their downfall when their monastery was invaded by the undead Legion of the Dead God. With their numbers bolstered by the countless fallen warriors of Turstakuri's lowlands, the Dead God's hordes slaughtered the monks as they meditated in silence. The only survivor of the massacre was a humble acolyte who watched in horror as the Dead God's necromancers resurrected the slain monks as undead servants to their horrible deity. He fled for safety with little more than a few scrolls detailing the monks' doctrines and soon restyled himself as the Anti-Mage, vowing to end all magic so that none would ever again suffer under the Dead God's wand.

Anti-Mage is the archetypal hard carry, incredibly weak in the early game but becoming a force to be reckoned with by the late game. While he excels at teamfighting, his real specialty is, as his name suggests, dealing with mages. His ability Mana Break gives his basic attacks the ability to burn away a certain amount of mana on each hit, dealing additional damage based on the mana removed, punishing the enemy for their use of magic and hindering their spellcasting ability. This ability is also usable by illusions. Blink teleports Anti-Mage to a targeted location within a short range. An all-purpose spell, it can be used to speed up farm, escape a fight Anti-Mage cannot win, or chase down enemies. To aid in his destruction of magic, Anti-Mage channels a Counterspell that passively gives him magic resistance and can be used to deflect incoming spells. Aghanim's Shard also gives him the related Counterspell Ally ability, which lets him place Counterspell on an ally on a separate cooldown from Counterspell itself, while spawning an uncontrollable illusion next to any enemy whose spell is reflected by either ability. Once the enemy's mana pool is exhausted by Mana Break and their own spells, Anti-Mage delivers the coup de grace with his ultimate ability Mana Void. This ability uses the target's lack of mana against them, dealing damage based on a percentage of the missing mana in an area to crush the mage along with anyone who dares associate with them. Aghanim's Scepter grants him a sixth ability, Blink Fragment, which summons an uncontrollable illusion of Anti-Mage at the target location to attack nearby enemies or near a target unit to attack them; these illusions also receive the spell deflection of Counterspell when it is cast.

In Dota Underlords, Anti-Mage is a tier 1 hero. His ability, Mana Break, passively burns mana from his attacks' target and deals half that amount as bonus damage.


  • Abled in the Adaptation: In DotA, he was blind, due to the fact that his original model, the Demon Hunter in Warcraft 3 was blind. In Dota 2, however, this was omitted and he fights without any blindfolds or defective eyes. However, one of his head wears, the Wrap of the Shifting Sorcerer, gives him a blindfold, likely to allude to his original skin.
  • Achilles' Heel: Teams that excel at pushing or have the power to potentially end the game early are a massive bane to Anti-Mage's team. Anti-Mage's only contribution to the early game is his ultimate, which can act as a massive teamfight nuke, but it relies on one of the enemy heroes having a large mana pool, and having used up a huge amount of said mana pool. All Anti-Mage can do is farm, which forces his team to potentially fight 4v5, and hope that his team can hold out long enough for him to get enough farm to contribute to the lategame, if there will be one.
  • Adaptation Species Change: Was a Night Elf in DotA.
  • Ambiguously Brown: He looks vaguely South Asian, probably to fit with his Buddhist Warrior Monk theme.
  • Armored But Frail: With Counterspell and Agility from levels and items, Anti-Mage becomes hugely resistant to both physical and magical damage when he gets farmed. However, his durability is kept in check by his depressingly bad Strength.
  • Attack Reflector: When activated, Counterspell will reflect the first enemy spell(s) targeted at Anti-Mage and his Blink Fragment illusions. While it only lasts a little over a second, this can still be enough since players will often instinctively try to stun an Anti-Mage that Blinks onto them.
  • Boring, but Practical: When you learn what his role is he becomes this, especially if you actually get a good support (especially if it's a reactive Treant, Winter Wyvern or Keeper of the Light) turning your part of the game into a 30 minute farm fest.
  • Counterspell: Literally the name of his third ability, which can be activated to deflect incoming spells.
  • Crutch Character: Despite being a Hard Carry, Anti-Mage is more defined by his ability to safely and quickly farm up than anything else, and will fall off in comparison to harder scaling carries with slower or less safe early games.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Anti-Mage used to be a normal servant boy of the Turstarkuri monastery, but the attack of the Legion of Dead God was extremely scarring with him being the Sole Survivor and seeing everyone he served loyally die. This led him to believe that all magic is an abomination.
  • Distaff Counterpart: The Disciple's Path persona replaces Anti-Mage with his female disciple, Wei. They're completely different people lore-wise (mutual hatred of magic aside), but mechanically they're the exact same hero.
  • Does Not Like Magic: It's right there in his name. Since mages slaughtered his monastery, he has embarked on a crusade to end all magic. Although his Blink skill can be considered magic...
  • Doppelgänger Attack: Blink Fragment creates an illusion of Anti-Mage to attack the targeted unit or enemies near the illusion. Because illusions of Anti-Mage have Mana Break, this speeds up the process of depleting enemies' mana and deals a good bit of damage (which is why Manta Style is also considered a core item for him). With Aghanim's Shard, he also creates attacking illusions next to any enemy whose spell is reflected by Counterspell or Counterspell Ally.
  • Dual Wielding: He dual wields a pair of Double Weapons, although the model has been changed to a pair of hand axes instead.
  • Finishing Move: Mana Void is best used to finish off a fleeing enemy, as it has bigger range than Anti-Mage's right-click attacks and deals damage based on missing mana, so it's most effective if the target has expended their mana or has had theirs burnt by Mana Break. It's often joked that Anti-Mage's typical teamfight contribution is to walk in, steal a kill with Mana Void, and then go back to farming.
  • Flowery Elizabethan English: His default way of talking.
  • Fragile Speedster: Anti-Mage has extremely pitiful Strength gain, so in the early levels he's quite easy to kill, having only his Blink and Mana Break to remain mobile while dealing damage.
  • Glass Cannon: A notable subversion. On paper, he looks like your typical squishy DPS hero, with high innate agility and low base attack time giving him high attack damage output alongside pitiful Strength and a list of preferred items that don't boost survivability. In practice, he doesn't really need much survivability; his primary attribute, Agility, means a farmed Anti-Mage will be stacked with armor, while Counterspell gives him all the magic resistance he needs and then some, meaning he won't be going down quickly unless the enemy has a lot of Pure damage. And even then, his Blink means that you also need stuns/disables or help from teammates to cut off his escape routes.
  • Irony:
    • He hates mages, but usually ends up heavily relying on them (his lane partner, precisely) for survival in the early game.
    • Despite having sworn to end all magic, the techniques he uses are considered a type of magic by some people, judging by certain voice responses in the game.
      Huskar: Anti-Mage, your dependence on mana is unholy.
      Monkey King: Anti-Mage, beating hypocrites like you never gets old.
  • Item Caddy: Anti-Mage's main strength compared to other hard carries is his ability to flash-farm and split-push very quickly: with the cleave and mana regeneration from Battle Fury, he could spam Blink to jump from jungle camp to jungle camp and farm endlessly, while his low BAT and high Agility means that his Manta Style illusions will easily melt targets. It's not uncommon to see Anti-Mage already six-slotted while the enemy carries are still busy farming their luxuries. The downside to this is that he has a 15-20 minute window where you NEED to win before he gets outcarried, as Mana Break doesn't scale very well into the ultra lategame and he becomes susceptible to the high physical damage of opposing farmed carries.
  • Knight Templar: To him, magic is evil so all that use magic are blights to be removed. Indiscriminately.
  • Lightning Bruiser: With enough points in Counterspell and armor via his agility gain, he becomes extremely hard to kill since he can shrug off magic nukes and most of the physical damage that's thrown his way. Not to mention being able to use Blink to dodge attacks and Manta Style to force the enemy team to spread out their damage.
  • Mage Killer: Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Anti-Mage is particularly effective against Intelligence casters since he takes less damage from their nukes, can burn their mana, reflect their spells and punish them for spending too much mana. This is his claim to fame/infamy and one of the source of his nickname "Anti-Fun" since playing mages is fun.
  • Magic by Any Other Name: It's never explained how he's capable of doing what he does without it counting as "magic", since by all accounts it uses the same mana as regular magic and most characters see it as magic. He's something of a hypocrite as far as this goes. Wild Mass Guessing theorizes that he uses some form of Ki Manipulation, or that his monastery's methods were more spiritual than what we would consider magic.
  • Magic Is Evil: It's probably not fair to generalize about magic users based on the Dead God's army, but just try explaining that to him.
  • Magikarp Power: The archetypal "hard carry"; he's fairly useless early on in the game, but as soon as he finishes farming his core items (usually a Battle Fury and Manta Style) he becomes nearly unstoppable with the right team behind him.
  • Mana Burn: Mana Break causes Anti-Mage's normal attacks to remove the target's mana if applicable. His ultimate, Mana Void, deals damage based on how much mana his target is missing, which synergizes with Mana Break.
  • Mechanically Unusual Class: Anti-Mage is somewhat different from some other hard carries in that if he can get Battle Fury, Blink allows him to farm incredibly quickly. If he can get BF quickly and uses it effectively, he grows extremely fast and can get big items before many other carries. However, he can still be outgunned later on by even harder carries, because at the end of the game, you can still only carry 6 items, while Mana Break doesn't scale as well to the late game compared to the steroids skills of other carries like Time Lock or Split Shot. Because of this, unlike other hard carries who peak at ultra-late game, Anti-Mage's most effective time is when he's accrued a significant farm/level advantage over the opposition.
  • Mix-and-Match Weapon: The Immortal Basher Blades look like a mix between a pair of Skull Basher hammers and Anti-Mage's standard swords.
  • Money Multiplier: Blink, with its short cooldown, significantly reduces the time Anti-Mage has to spend walking between creep waves and/or jungle camps, allowing him to farm faster than most other carries. Combined with Battle Fury, he can flash-farm the jungle in 45 seconds and repeat in an endless loop.
  • No Name Given: The name of Anti-Mage's default persona is unknown (he was once called Magina in the original DotA, but that name was removed).
  • Percent Damage Attack: Inverted; the more mana the target is missing, the more damage Mana Void deals.
  • Precision F-Strike: An unused kill-quote would have the usually Flowery Elizabethan English-talking Anti-Mage dip into profanity before resuming his manner of talk.
    Bark on, bitch. I hear thee not.
  • Purple Is Powerful: His color motif.
  • Resistant to Magic: Counterspell increases Anti-Mage's magic resistance, and can be activated to reflect a targeted spell at an enemy hero.
  • Secret Police: In the lore, Anti-Mage was recruited by the Tyler Estate due to his connection to Silencer, who works for them as a warden. The Tyler Estate governs the use of magic in the Magical Society of Weeping Rose, and he gets sent after wanted spellcasters by the Estate.
    Silencer (Flavor Text of Collateral Damage Artifact card): Convincing The Antimage to work with the Tyler Estate wasn't an easy task, but it was worth it. He is... exuberant in his work.
  • Self-Duplication: On top of Manta Style being a core item on him, Anti-Mage can create uncontrollable illusions with Blink Fragment (his Aghanim's Scepter ability) and Counterspell (when upgraded with Aghanim's Shard).
  • Teleport Spam: Blink is spammed to jump from jungle camp to jungle camp and farm after Anti-Mage gets his Battle Fury.
  • Unrelated in the Adaptation: In the original DotA, Anti-Mage and Terrorblade were brothers and share models based on Warcraft's demon hunter and Illidan Stormrage's demonic form (which are nearly identical to one another). Unused lines from Anti-Mage imply that Valve was originally going to keep the backstory but when Terrorblade was added into Dota 2, the connection between the two were removed.
    Antimage: (killing Terroblade): The disgrace of magic stricken from our family.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Dead God's Legion used magic to massacre the monks of Turstarkuri and he, being witness to it all and the only survivor, swore to put an end to magic as a whole by killing all magic users, so nobody will ever have to suffer from it.
  • What the Hell, Player?:
    • If you bought Aghanim's Scepter, even though it is a valid item to get for him.

    Zet, the Arc Warden 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/arc_warden.png
Voiced by: James Kirkland

In the beginning, there existed only a primordial mind of incredible power. It shattered upon the universe's creation, and two of the larger fragments, Radinthul and Diruulth - also known as the Ancients, Radiant and Dire - immediately found themselves locked in opposition and began to reshape the cosmos to serve their conflict. With the battle threatening existence itself, a third fragment, Zet, sealed Radiant and Dire in a prison known as the Mad Moon by sacrificing most of its own strength. Zet stood watch over the prison for countless eons as it orbited a nondescript world, but the Mad Moon slowly weakened as Radiant and Dire continue to clash within. Finally, the prison exploded, and Radiant and Dire fell to the world below, continuing their struggle. The sheer power of the explosion combined with the Ancients' energies to transform Zet, causing its form to break into many fragments of varying power and with a single shared consciousness. In order to end the Ancients' cosmic threat, the remnants of Zet have joined the war, seeking to either reunite the two fragments or destroy both of them once and for all.

Zet the Arc Warden is a hero that requires micromanagement and farm to spiral out of control. In the early stages of the game, it is a very powerful nuker. Its first ability, Flux, allows Arc Warden to cripple an enemy down and deal large amounts of damage. It and other allied heroes or buildings can be protected from physical attacks with its second ability Magnetic Field, while gaining swift attack speed. Similar to Techies' Land Mines, Arc Warden's third ability, Spark Wraith, allows it to place wraiths that attack when an enemy goes near them, potentially dealing large amounts of magical damage. Arc Warden's ultimate is Tempest Double, which allows it to make a perfect copy of itself that can use all of Arc Warden's spells and item abilities (with few exceptions), making it a doubly potent hero regardless of role.

Uniquely, Zet is attuned to the Ancients and its abilities have a set of Tempest versions with slightly different properties: Tempest Flux inflicts more damage but has a lesser slow, Tempest Magnetic Field has a longer duration and grants allies bonus attack range and bonus magical attack damage, and Tempest Spark Wraith deals reduced damage but has a shorter activation delay, faster travel speed, and a longer slow. While fighting on the Radiant side, Arc Warden uses its default abilities while the Tempest Double uses the Tempest abilities, and vice versa on the Dire side. Additionally, the Tempest Double loses attack damage while far away from the real Zet.

In Dota Underlords, Arc Warden is a tier 4 hero. His ability, Tempest Double, summons a near-perfect clone of himself, inheriting his item, with the only caveat being that it generates less mana from attacking and none from taking damage.


  • Adaptation Species Change: From a gnoll in DotA to a fragment of the primordial mind of the universe in Dota 2.
  • Badass Cape: A nice blue one.
  • Boring, but Practical: Building Arc Warden as a right-clicking carry and split-pusher that uses the Tempest Double as an expendable source of extra physical damage and sieging is far from the most exciting way to play him and doesn't require juggling as many active abilities, but it works just fine. He doesn't have any damage boosters aside from Magnetic Field, but damage-boosting items are still enough to make him scary.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Though he looks dark and scary, Zet's purpose is to put an end to the conflict of the Ancients.
  • Defog of War: Spark Wraith can be cast from obscenely far away, gives vision around it and lasts for 50 seconds, so it can be put on common gank routes as an early warning system. It also ignores invisibility, so an attentive player can even spot an incoming smoke gank and bail out in time.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Arc Warden has to do everything he has to offer TWICE, through the use of Tempest Double, not to mention the active items that are thrown into the mix. Between having to use all your item actives twice, as well as being fluent with the spell usage of Arc Warden and his double, you'll quickly come to realise where the skill requirement in order to pull the hero fluently off comes in. A lot can go wrong when you play as Arc Warden, and especially for new players, things can get especially hectic when they have to juggle around between the real warden, and the double.
  • Dull Surprise: His responses lean towards the deadpan, regardless of if he's killing someone, winning, or getting injured.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Zet is a scattered fragment of the primordial mind of the universe.
  • Enemy Mine: Given that Zet opposes both Ancients, he's this in-game no matter which side he's on. He even has (currently unused) voice lines noting the temporary nature of his current alignment.
  • Expendable Clone: Downplayed. The Tempest Double clone does give some experience and gold, but it's still worth far less than a kill on the main Arc Warden, especially since he'll have another one up within half a minute. As a result, Arc Warden could (usually) get away with simply churning out doubles and sending them on suicide runs against the enemy base rather than pushing the base himself.
  • Fighting a Shadow: Playing against a farmed Arc Warden often becomes this. As the Tempest Double is every bit as powerful as the main Arc Warden (barring its lower attack damage if the real Zet isn't nearby, which isn't a huge factor if he's farmed), he doesn't have to be in a fight or push to make his presence felt, as he can have the double teleport over with Boots of Travel and start raising hell while Zet himself sits back and farms on the other end of the map. If he's sufficiently farmed, the Tempest Double can single-handedly keep the enemy occupied at their base with constant heavy pressure, making it difficult to gank the real Arc Warden since the enemy simply cannot leave their base unattended. And, of course, killing the double does very little, since Arc Warden can just keep resummoning it.
  • Glass Cannon: When 6-slotted with pushing items - say, Manta Style, Desolator, something for damage, and Refresher Orb, he can push from the Tier 3 tower all the way to the throne within seconds, often leaving the enemies no time to even react and teleport back to base. On the other hand, he is easy to kill if caught out of position.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: His only real facial features.
  • How the Mighty Have Fallen: In his backstory, Zet used to be much more powerful until he expended much of his power to seal the Ancients inside the Mad Moon.
  • I Know Your True Name: He calls the Dire and Radiant ancients by their true names, "Diruulth" and "Radinthul." He is notable among the cast for his particularly lofty goal — rather than gold or glory, he seeks to end the War of the Ancients altogether, whether through peace or the annihilation of one or both sides.
  • Ineffectual Loner: Invoked against Zet's enemies with Flux, which slows and deals damage over time to the target. However, this effect is nullified if another enemy gets nearby.
  • Item Caddy: The Tempest Double clone can use all of Zet's items, effectively giving Zet twice the effect from item actives (for example, double the gold with Hand of Midas, two additional illusions with Manta Style, two bursts with Dagon). Zet benefits greatly from getting an early Midas so that he can farm his core items as quickly as possible, as he cannot flash farm and his game impact is very insignificant otherwise.
  • Jack of All Stats: Arc Warden's ability to clone himself and get an extra use out of all his items and actives means there really aren't many bad ways to build him. He has enough Intelligence to make use of most item actives, but is also an Agility hero with great range so you can build him as a carry with no real drawbacks. As long as your items make sense in the context of your team composition (are you a ricing carry, or is your team looking to push and end early?) and you've taken your enemy heroes into account, Zet can thrive with most items.
  • Magikarp Power: Zet is a weak laner - mids like Shadow Fiend or Queen of Pain can easily shut him down, and he needs babysitting and space to farm his Hand of Midas. Despite needing a ton of money to come online, he has no ability to farm whatsoever - no waveclear, no AoE, nothing. Even with Hand of Midas he's far behind the top farmers in the game in terms of farm speed. However, if he gets any advantage, playing against him is the most nightmarish thing ever as he gets his damage items, Manta Style, and makes all fights hard with his 100% evasion and attack speed from Magnetic Field. There's no manfighting against Arc Warden, he just prints his money and finds an opening to destroy your base, and he's better at it than any other hero once the game goes late enough.
  • Magnetism Manipulation: With Magnetic Field, a circular distortion field of magnetic energy.
  • Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Zet is the first hero in the game whose abilities vary depending on whether he's on Radiant or Dire, as he and the Tempest Double have slightly different properties on their regular abilities and their skills are flipped if Zet is fighting for Dire.
  • Mercy Kill: Some of Zet's lines when killing an enemy suggest that this is how he sees it. If he's to be believed, the Ancients are brainwashing the heroes to fight for them, so it's not hard to see where he's coming from.
  • Money Multiplier: Hand of Midas is especially good on Zet. Since the Tempest Double has independent cooldowns from the main Arc Warden, he can use Hand of Midas (which has a 100 second cooldown) twice as frequently compared to other heroes. Much needed for Arc Warden, since he is so item-dependent, yet has no inherent ability to flash farm.
  • Mythology Gag: Two of his lines are references to his former appearance in DotA, where his model was that of a dog-like Gnoll.
    Arc Warden: "Doggedly."
    Arc Warden: "Hounding."
  • No Biological Sex: Though his voice is male, his lore makes it clear that Zet is actually genderless.
  • Obvious Rule Patch: The nature of Tempest Double makes it very easy for Arc Warden to abuse certain items, usually leading to one of these.
    • In 6.86, the most common Arc Warden build was Hand of Midas and Boots of Travel into straight Divine Rapier(s), then have the main hero AFK at the fountain while using Boots of Travel to throw at the enemy base endless clones carrying Divine Rapiers that Zet has no danger of losing - a gimmicky build that doesn't require much skill, is extremely difficult to punish and doesn't fit the core concept of the hero (a micro-intensive Difficult, but Awesome carry who can use most active items twice). Come 6.87, the Tempest Double can no longer make use of droppable items (Gem and Rapier), all but killing the Rapier rush build.
    • 7.00 prevented the double from copying consumable items aside from Town Portal Scroll. Previously, Arc Warden could simply purchase and hold onto a Healing Salve to get free uses of it from the Tempest Double. Not so much a problem when Tempest Double cost health and mana, but after the cost was removed, this basically translated into free healing.
    • As the Tempest Double copies the state of the main Arc Warden's items, it can have a permanent 10-second duration on Black King Bar's spell immunity as long as the real Arc Warden doesn't use his. 7.00 patched this out by making the double's BKB separate from the real Arc Warden, meaning that it will start at 10 seconds and degrade each time the double uses it.
  • Order Versus Chaos: Represents the "order" side of the equation, with the Ancients being the "chaos".
  • Sadistic Choice: When hit by Flux, a solo hero will either have to eat a decent amount of damage and remain slowed for 6 seconds, or will have to position themselves closer to their own creep wave, potentially forcing them out of the safe zone. Either way, the kill potential is quite high with the openings the spell provides.
  • Self-Duplication: Tempest Double creates a clone of Zet that can use his items and skills.
  • Shock and Awe: Flux and Spark Wraith both manifest as forms of electricity.
  • Shout-Out: One of his when killing a hero is a reference to the popular Running Gag in The Dota 2 Reporter whenever any Fridge Logic is brought up.
  • Swirly Energy Thingy: The effect of Flux.
  • Third-Person Person: A variant: Arc Warden refers to itself as "the Self."
  • Time Abyss: This guy originally sealed the Ancients in the Mad Moon. That should speak for itself.
  • Trap Master: Spark Wraith creates a ghost that haunts an area until an enemy comes nearby.
  • Weak, but Skilled: Even though he is an agility hero, his starting agility and growth is horrendous, and his strength and intelligence isn't much better. However, he makes up for it with his strong abilities and terrifying late-game power.
  • Wham Line: From his introduction comic: "Diruulth and Radinthul of the others were at war. They became too powerful. The Self ended the war. Trapped them in a prison."

    Strygwyr, the Bloodseeker 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Bloodseeker_3376.png
Voiced by: Jon St. John

The horrific deities known as the Flayed Twins, worshiped in the misty peaks of Xhacatocatl, constantly thirst for blood. In order to keep their obscene appetites sated, their priests send out a ritually sanctioned hunter known as the Bloodseeker to hunt for the vital fluid these gods require. Styrgwyr is the current Bloodseeker, and any blood he spills from his victims is magically channeled to the Flayed Twins through the enchanted markings on his equipment, allowing him to fulfill his duty by simply hunting all he sees. Should he fail, the Flayed Twins would turn upon the inhabitants of Xhacatocatl for sustenance, but fortunately, Strygwyr is a ruthless hunter who seeks his prey with hound-like efficiency and predatory savagery.

Bloodseeker is a melee hero that is often played as a carry or situationally a jungler. As he thirsts for blood, teamfights are a perfect site for his powers as he can deprive supports of their spells for a short period, empower his carry with bloodthirsty rage, force a threat to stop running and chase down any wounded stragglers once the battle is over. Bloodrage is a mana free spell with low cooldown that amplifies damage from a hero's attacks and lets them heal from anyone they kill. However, they too take increased damage and heals whoever kills them, making Bloodrage a double edged sword. Uniquely, Bloodrage also amplify spell damage. Blood Rite is a target point spell that covers a large area with a blood ritual, silencing and dealing pure damage to all enemy units within the ritual a few seconds later. Thirst is a passive that increases Bloodseeker's movement speed and attack speed as enemy heroes are damaged, eventually giving Bloodseeker's team sight of them if their health reaches a certain threshold. Rupture is an ultimate spell that pierces spell immunity and deals pure damage to anyone who attempts to move under its effect, effectively forcing them to stop walking or else risk catastrophic damage. Only a Town Portal Scroll can allow the victim to escape, and that's only if Bloodseeker didn't bring a friend with him to interrupt attempts at teleportation. Aghanim's Scepter grants him the ability Blood Mist, which can be toggled on to spill Bloodseeker's blood to slow and damage enemies in an area at the cost of his health. It also has a passive component that causes any overheal he receives to grant him a damage-absorbing barrier that depletes over time.

In Artifact, Bloodseeker is a black hero. Blood Bath is a Reactive Ability which fully heals him when an enemy blocking him dies, and Blood Rage, his signature card, silences a unit and grants it +4 Attack for one round.

In Dota Underlords, Bloodseeker is a tier 1 hero. His ability, Bloodrage, causes Bloodseeker to constantly lose health, but increases his attack speed based on his missing health; it also heals a large portion of his health when he kills an enemy.


  • Achilles' Heel: Bloodseeker has no reliable way to interrupt enemies from simply teleporting away via TP scroll or Boots of Travel, unless he brings along a teammate who can do so, or builds Eul's Scepter of Divinity or Skull Basher.
  • Adaptation Species Change: In DotA, Bloodseeker was a half-demon orc. While most orc heroes were remade into Oglodi, Bloodseeker was not, instead being changed to an unnamed, more bestial race.
  • Ambiguously Human: Looks fairly human in appearance, but his bestial appearance and concealed face make it possible he's something completely different. In Dota Underlords, Bloodseeker used to belong to the Human alliance, implying that he may be human, though that alliance also contains the decidedly non-human Keeper of the Light, casting doubt on its lore relevance.
  • Armor-Piercing Attack: Rupture deals Pure damage and pierces spell immunity. The only way to reduce its damage is by being either Bristleback or Spectre with points in Bristleback or Dispersion, respectively.
  • Barrier Maiden: Strygwyr's blood sacrifices serve to keep the Flayed Twins sated, so that they don't claim the blood of his people instead.
  • Beast Man: He has digitigrade canine feet and is referred to as the Flayed Twins' hound, but we don't know what his face looks like under the mask. If he has a face, that is.
  • The Berserker: His entire skillset is based around blindly rushing in onto a wounded enemy to finish him off - and possibly his allies.
  • Blade Below the Shoulder: He uses a pair of underarm blades that extend from behind his shoulder to slightly infront of his hand.
  • Blindfolded Vision: Fluff text for the Cowl of the Blood Covenant cosmetic item implies that Bloodseeker borrows the Flayed Twins' vision to see through his mask.
  • Blood Bath: As written above, Strygwyr takes these baths to heal his wounds.
  • Blood Knight: Pun fully intended; how else beyond ruthless hunting and battle would he get the blood to sate the Flayed Twins?
  • Blood Lust: Both Strygwyr and the Flayed Twins.
  • Blood Magic: His magic, unsurprisingly, is blood red. Blood Rite in particular has him drawing a runic circle using magical blood, and Rupture has him tearing the blood right out of victims from quite a considerable distance away.
  • Bloody Murder: Blood Mist has Bloodseeker spraying his own blood to damage and slow nearby enemies.
  • Cast from Hit Points: Blood Mist deals damage to both Bloodseeker and all enemies next to him.
  • Cool Mask: He wears a blindfold with a distinctive red pattern on it that covers his eyes.
  • Delayed Explosion: Blood Rite takes a few seconds after casting to activate, however it compensates for this with its large area of effect, long cast range, and the existence of Rupture.
  • Double-Edged Buff: A hero affected by Bloodrage attacks faster and deals more spell damage at the cost of a percentage of their health per second.
  • Dual Wielding: A pair of claw, bladed weapons, or daggers.
  • The Faceless: Bloodseeker's eyes are always covered, either by a harness or hood. Model-wise, Bloodseeker doesn't even have eyes.
  • Four-Fingered Hands
  • Geometric Magic: When using Blood Rite, Strygwyr draws a circle of blood on the ground that eventually explodes, dealing damage and silencing enemies.
  • Glass Cannon: Bloodseeker fights best when he's already winning, as his kit is based entirely around taking advantage of wounded enemies to bolster his own damage output and scoring kills to keep himself healthy. If denied the opportunity to kill things, he folds in short order, not helped by his tendency to have Bloodrage on constantly.
    • Bloodrage can turn anybody on his team into this, letting them hit harder and faster but bleeding out their health over time. Of particular note, it affects damage from spells as well as physical attacks, meaning that you can cast it on the Zeus standing in the back and the entire enemy team will absorb 20% more damage from Thundergod's Wrath.
  • Gratuitous Spanish: One of his dying responses.
    Bloodseeker: "Sangre... sagrada."
  • HP to One: Bloodrage can drain an ally's HP by a percentage per second, but it cannot deal lethal damage.
  • Injured Vulnerability:
    • Did your hero's HP get below 30% and there's an enemy Bloodseeker nearby? Oh good for you! Now Bloodseeker can smell your blood and spot you in his map, wherever you go, and he gains a ridiculous speed boost for that. If he hadn't caught up to you in a vulnerable spot, then God help you if there's another hero with global presence in the enemy team that will take advantage of your low health thanks to Bloodseeker's satellite view, or your ganking plan is ruined because you were trying to gank while having low health just for the kill.
    • Even if you're not below 30% HP, missing any health at all can provide a damage and movement speed to Bloodseeker, meaning that no matter what you're probably making him stronger somehow. While the buff's effects aren't as strong at small amounts of missing HP, it adds it all up from all five heroes on your team, so getting low in a teamfight can still give him absurd amounts of movement speed and damage.
  • Life Drain: When Bloodseeker has an Aghanim's Shard and is affected by Bloodrage, his attacks deal bonus Pure damage and heal him for that amount.
  • Life Drinker: While Bloodseeker himself is able to drain life energy by spilling blood, most of it goes to the Flayed Twins.
  • Lightning Bruiser: A farmeed Bloodseeker hits fast and hard, and can have insane movement speed thanks to Thirst. Aghanim's Scepter can even make him surprisingly bulky thanks to the passive component of Blood Mist, which lets him overheal himself to gain a barrier on top of his health bar and thus give him effectively an extra 50% bonus health just from farming creeps before a fight.
  • Magic Knight: Bloodseeker has two powerful nuking abilities, an attack buff, high Agility growth, and Bloodrage to amplify damage on both sides. This means he can be played as both a nuker by augmenting his high-damage spells with items like Dagon or a carry by building physical damage items to take advantage of Thirst.
  • Mayincatec: His design and Back Story seems to be loosely based on this, keeping up with the theme of Human Sacrifice.
  • Mutual Disadvantage: Tends to happen in situations where Bloodrage has been cast. The afflicted target will deal much more damage, including from spells, but if they get stunned they're left to helplessly bleed out.
  • The Nose Knows: With his eyes covered, Strygwyr uses his sense of smell to track wounded victims.
    Strygwyr: (activating Thirst's vision effect) I smell blood...
  • Noun Verber: No points for guessing what the Bloodseeker is aiming to gain from his fights.
  • Obvious Rule Patch: When he was initially reworked, Bloodrage would apply its bonus fully no matter what, which had obvious applications with heroes who had global high-damage spells (namely Zeus). Come 6.82c, Bloodrage was nerfed to only give half the bonus when the distance between the two parties is greater than a certain amount.
  • Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Victims of Rupture will bleed quite heavily as a visual effect, and will start bleeding more profusely when they move. It gets a bit ludicrous when combined with forced-movement abilities like Skewer, Toss, and Meat Hook, potentially resulting in heroes spilling more blood than their body can reasonably contain.
  • Overly-Long Tongue: Bloodseeker's tongue grows very long if Thirst is active when he has the Maw of Eztzhok Immortal mask equipped.
  • Percent Damage Attack: With Aghanim's Shard, Bloodrage causes Bloodseeker's attacks to drain a percentage of the target's max health on each hit.
  • Power Nullifier: Blood Rite, on top of affecting a huge area and damaging enemies, silences them for up to 6 seconds if they remain in the area. Because of its huge effect radius, dropping this in the middle of a teamfight can greatly disrupt the enemies' attempts to kill you and your teammates.
  • The Power of Blood: Everything about Strygwyr is about blood. Magic? Blood. Strength? Blood. Puns? Bloody puns!
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Bloodseeker sheds blood not out of malice, but out of ritual duty to his people and the Flayed Twins.
    (when recruited in Underlords) "Murder is not a joyous task. It is a spiritual one."
  • Ritual Magic: Blood Rite starts a ritual in a large area that deals damage and silences all enemies inside it when completed.
  • Sadistic Choice: Try to flee from him while under the effects of Rupture and take damage the farther you go, or stay and let him rip you to shreds, which one would you choose? This can be compounded with Blood Rite, which can force the target to move and take Rupture, or stand still and take the nuke damage alongside the silence (and with both damage sources possibly increased by Bloodrage, all while fueling Thirst no matter which option you choose). If you have a Town Portal scroll, you could use it to flee since he is usually not strong enough to burst most heroes down at full health, but that only works if a) Bloodseeker has no allies with him who can stun you, and b) he doesn't have items that can stun you, such as Skull Basher.
  • Scary Teeth: The only facial feature seen under his mask.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The Flayed Twins mentioned in his backstory. Strygwyr keeps it sealed via bloodshed so that the Twins don't break out and start seeking blood themselves.
  • Sensor Character: Enemy heroes below 25% of maximum HP will be globally revealed through fog of war if Thirst has been skilled, even through invisibility.
  • Skeletons in the Coat Closet: The Bonehunter set gives Bloodseeker a set of armor and weapons made out of bones.
  • Soft-Spoken Sadist: He's rather quiet for a vicious Blood Knight.
  • Spikes of Villainy: Worn as a necklace.
  • Super-Senses: He can sense wounded heroes' location across the entire map. Prior to 6.79 patch he even shared their vision (meaning that he saw what they saw), but the ability had a limited range.
  • Super-Speed: Thirst grants Bloodseeker movement speed the lower health his enemies have. With the right item build and enough enemies low, Bloodseeker's speed can max out at 1817. Note that the normal speed cap is only 550.
  • Surprisingly Sudden Death: It's not uncommon for Bloodseeker to build and upgrade a Dagon for the purpose of one-shotting squishy heroes with a massive Bloodrage-amplified nuke. If Bloodseeker has Bloodrage active on both himself and the target, a level 5 Dagon hits for nearly 1600 magical damage, and even if it doesn't instantly vaporize the target, Bloodseeker can easily finish them off with his Thirst bonuses or Rupture (although this has since fallen out of favor with Bloodrage being reworked again).
  • The Unpronounceable: His name. Fan theories as to how Icefrog came up with the name range from the influence of drugs to Icefrog just rolling his face on the keyboard. Another theory is that is was derived from Strigoi, a creature from Romanian mythology. Some Strigoi are said to have vampiric properties or simply drink blood, hence fitting the Bloodseeker.
  • Vampiric Draining: His motivation is to obtain blood sacrifices for his gods. In-game, Thirst lets him heal by killing things.
  • Walking Shirtless Scene
  • Weaksauce Weakness:
    • Bloodseeker is hard-countered by Town Portal scrolls, a 100-gold item which doesn't take a slot and most half-decent players will be carrying around for the whole game. If Bloodseeker comes to gank, a TP will do the job as he can neither interrupt it nor burst down most heroes in the 3-second channelling time of the scroll. There's a reason why Eul's Scepter and Skull Basher are popular items among Bloodseeker players.
    • Blade Mail lets tanky heroes rip through Bloodseeker like soggy tissue just by turning it on and running around after getting Ruptured. It gets hilariously sad if that hero is Abaddon, since he can also use Borrowed Time for a full heal just to add insult to injury.

    Gondar, the Bounty Hunter 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Bounty_Hunter_6952.png
Voiced by: Michael Gregory

Gondar is an elusive figure about whom there are only rumors. Many conflicting theories exist about his origins; some say he was an orphan raised by the legendary Soruq the Hunter, others claim he was a street urchin raised by a thieves' guild or that he simply acquired his tracking skills as a matter of surviving the wilderness. Likewise, countless stories of his impressive feats exist, from assassinating the tyrant King Goff to capturing the great thief White Cape to slaying Soruq himself. Only one thing is certain: no target is safe from his blades... so long as you're willing to pay the Bounty Hunter's price, that is.

Gondar the Bounty Hunter is an elusive hero most often played as a roaming ganker, picking off his foes while raking in plenty of gold to line his allies' pockets. No enemies are safe from the Bounty Hunter, as he strikes without warning, and anyone with the misfortune to encounter his blade are unlikely to escape. Shuriken Toss is a powerful single-target nuke, dealing heavy damage and a mini-stun to the target, letting Bounty Hunter easily pick off fleeing targets and interrupt attempts at teleportation. With his second ability Jinada, Bounty Hunter carefully plans his next hit to deal heavy bonus damage while relieving the enemy of some of their hard-earned gold. His bread-and-butter ability, Shadow Walk, turns the Bounty Hunter invisible for a long duration and allows him to walk through other units, and breaking the invisibility with an attack will reduce the victim's movement speed. This allows him to roam enemy territory undetected and take enemy heroes – and the occasional courier – by surprise, making short work of them before escaping without a trace. Finally, his ultimate ability Track lets the Bounty Hunter keep tabs on his enemy's position, even seeing through invisibility, while granting him a speed boost and critical damage against the target, making it difficult to run and impossible to hide – especially as Shuriken Toss will bounce to Tracked enemies from a very long distance. Finally, if the Tracked hero dies, Bounty Hunter and any nearby allies will receive a decent sum of gold, letting him forgo farming in favor of ganking enemy heroes while solidifying an economic advantage over the foe. When the Bounty Hunter stalks the battlefield, the enemy learns to fear the shadows, lest his blade find its mark while his allies walk away with coin to spare.

In Artifact, Bounty Hunter is a black hero. His Passive Ability, Jinada has a 50% chance of increasing his Attack by 4 for one round before each action phase. His signature card, Track, increases an enemy's Bounty by 10 until it dies.

In Dota Underlords, Bounty Hunter is a tier 1 hero. His ability, Shuriken Toss, deals heavy damage to an enemy and mini-stuns it.


  • Adaptation Name Change: His third skill was renamed from Wind Walk to Shadow Walk in the transition from DotA to Dota 2, ostensibly so it wouldn't share names with one of the Blademaster's skills in vanilla Warcraft III.
  • Adaptation Species Change: Originally Gondar was a Draenei (who are owned by Blizzard Entertainment) in DotA. His current species is unnamed.
  • Anti-Escape Mechanism: All of Bounty Hunter's abilities lend themselves to locking down a target in such a way as to make escape extremely difficult.
    • Shuriken Toss interrupts channeling spells, meaning that TP escapes are virtually impossible even under the best of circumstances and it also has the ability to bounce to tracked units.
    • Hitting an enemy from Shadow Walk's invisibility slows their movement speed for a short duration, giving Bounty Hunter's team additional time to lock down the target (and giving him more time to get additional right-clicks in).
    • Shadow Walk lets Bounty Hunter scout out the area around his target prior to initiating, and lets him loiter as long as he pleases until his target reaches a place favorable for ganking.
    • Track gives basic vision and True Sight on the target, as well as a movement speed bonus to all allies near the target. This automatically throws juking through trees out the window, and eliminates invisibility as an option, to say nothing of simply running away being difficult at best.
  • Back Stab: The bonus damage from Jinada and the slow from Shadow Walk work this way. While neither ability is dependent on position, they are often the very first warning that you'll get that a Bounty Hunter is nearby.
  • Bandit Mook: Jinada allows Bounty Hunter to steal money from his attack targets.
  • Bling of War: The Immortal Hunter's Hoard is a literal bag of gold that Bounty Hunter carries into battle.
  • Bounty Hunter: You don't say?
  • Cat Folk: Well, he looks like a cat under that mask.
  • Critical Hit Class: Bounty Hunter relies on the critical hit and speed bonus from Track and bonus attack speed from Shadow Walk to quickly burst down enemies in a gank.
  • Defog of War: Track provides basic vision and True Sight on the target (and around it with Aghanim's Shard), meaning that invisibility in all cases but Slark's ultimate will be neutralized.
  • Difficult, but Awesome:
    • In high-level games where everyone carries detection, smart Bounty Hunter players will have to know not to rely too much on invisibility and still be able to evade and counter detection with good map awareness, and get ganks off despite the enemy team's efforts. When played as a support and not as a carry, Bounty Hunter has a great amount of utility that gives his team a firm advantage.
    • Track is a very unique spell in that it doesn't telegraph Bounty Hunter's position to the enemy if he casts it, meaning that if he's in the fog of war and Tracks an enemy, they won't see him do it. However, timing the use of Track can still be quite difficult, as while the enemy won't see the huge red crosshair or trailing smoke, they can tell that they've been Tracked due to the debuff appearing in their status bar and nearby enemy creeps moving faster from the movement speed bonus. Therefore, against smart enemies, Bounty Hunter has to save casting Track during a gank until the very last second when the enemy can't react, or risk alerting the target.
  • Double Weapon: His weapon is sharp on both ends, resembling an extended tonfa with a blade on each side.
  • Dual Wielding: A more realistic variant with an offhand dagger.
  • Dynamic Entry: Bounty Hunter is often the initiator in a gank due to his combination of skills, as the first warning you get of a Bounty Hunter being around is being Tracked from out of sight, then getting maimed by a Jinada hit out of Shadow Walk.
  • The Faceless: By default, Gondar wears a mask that covers the lower half of his face. Averted with later cosmetic sets, many of which reveal his face.
  • Fuuma Shuriken: Shuriken Toss does relatively little damage, and scales very badly, however it massively slows down the target for a fraction of a second and is often enough to finish the job after right-clicking the target down enough.
  • Glass Cannon: Bounty Hunter suffers from low strength growth, meaning that he's easily killed if detected.
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: Averted during Shadow Walk, otherwise played straight.
  • Hunter of His Own Kind: In a meta sense. Unusually, as an invisibility hero, Bounty Hunter is extremely adept at killing other invisibility heroes, since Track will render their invisibility useless and give Bounty Hunter's teammates the gold they need on Dust and Sentries. The same can also apply to blinking escape heroes, since they rely quite a bit on the enemy team not knowing where they blinked to, not simply putting distance between themselves and the attacker.
  • Invisibility: Shadow Walk gives Bounty Hunter temporary invisibility, allowing him to roam and gank at will. Breaking invisibility with an attack will cripple the enemy's movement speed.
  • Invisibility Flicker: He has to refresh Shadow Walk periodically to stay invisible, revealing himself for a moment, though smart players will do this from outside of enemy vision range.
  • It's Personal: He treats most of his kills as simply targets to be eliminated, but sometimes...
  • Mechanically Unusual Class: Despite being an Agility hero with abilities suggesting a carry role, Bounty Hunter is more often than not built as a utility support instead, using Shadow Walk and Jinada to facilitate ganks and boosting his team's gold income with Track.
  • Money Multiplier:
    • Track grants bonus reliable gold note  to Bounty Hunter and any assisting allies, which means that any successful ganks will often give a huge gold advantage to his team, and if snowballed properly can create a huge gap that will win games. Likewise, teamfighting against Bounty Hunter is a very risky proposition; while his teamfight presence is largely limited to spamming Track and the occasional Shuriken Toss, every death will give the enemy team a significant gold advantage (easily reaching over 1000 gold per kill with max-level Track).
    • In Artifact, his signature card Track has the effect of increasing a hero's bounty by 10 until they die. Considering how a dying enemy hero normally gives you 5 gold, this means you get triple the gold from that kill.
  • Nothing Personal: He's just doing what he's paid for.
  • One-Hit Kill: A good Bounty Hunter who gets multiple Track kills will often have large amounts of farm while simultaneously weakening the enemy's (if the enemy is dead, they lose unreliable gold and are unable to farm while they're respawning, all the while Bounty Hunter's team can take map objectives since they can teamfight 4v5). Because of this disparity, Bounty Hunter can often farm up several damage items and inflict this with a Jinada crit on a squishy enemy support.
  • Pinball Projectile: Shuriken Toss will bounce to any target that is affected by Track within a 900 radius of the previous target. This means that casting Track on the entire enemy team right before a clash can allow him to deal a surprising amount of damage that also mini-stuns the victim, allowing him to interrupt enemy heroes at critical moments.
  • Reverse Grip: Wields his dagger this way.
  • Scarily Competent Tracker: Bounty Hunter's ultimate, Track, marks the target, granting guaranteed vision (as well as True Sight) of the target for an extended period of time, as well as increasing allied heroes' movement speed anywhere within a certain radius. It can also be spammed, meaning that you can apply the debuff to multiple enemy heroes at once. He can even tell how much money his target is carrying... somehow.
  • Skill Gate Characters: Given the fact that he is an Agility hero as well as Jinada giving him bonus damage and Track giving him critical hit and bonus gold, it is incredibly common for low level players to build him as a carry. Max Jinada to give bonus damage as well as free gold or Shuriken Toss for huge magic damage before leveling Track at level 6, get gank kills for Track gold, and buy damage dealing items such as Desolator & Monkey King Bar before snowballing to the point of one-shotting people indiscriminately. However, Bounty Hunter's DPS does not scale well into the late game (as his damage numbers are static and Jinada is bound to a cooldown) where the opposing carries will have already farmed enough items to shrug off his burst damage before he gets killed in return, wasting away all that gold you've attained that could be better spent on items that benefit your whole team such as wards or Aura-based items. Not to mention that, like all other invisibility heroes, players would have already invested in Dust, Sentries, or Gem of True Sight in the late game to counter heroes like him, especially because unlike other invisibility heroes, he has no other means of escaping should he get detected by the enemy.
  • Smoke Out: Shadow Walk is started by throwing a smoke bomb.
  • Spam Attack: Track can be cast once every 4 seconds as needed. This allows Bounty Hunter to apply the debuff to multiple enemies before a teamfight, which in turn allows him to deal more damage with Shuriken Toss.
  • Spell Blade: Jinada enchants Bounty Hunter's blade every few seconds for massive bonus damage.
  • Video Game Stealing: Jinada steals a small amount of unreliable gold when Bounty Hunter attacks an enemy hero.
  • Weak, but Skilled: Bounty Hunter is below average as an Agility hero in most categories short of his Agility growth and base armor, and even has a very slow attack animation (0.59 seconds for a melee hero), making it hard to time last-hits with him in lane (to say nothing of constantly being harassed by the enemy while attempting to last-hit). However, his invisibility spell and passive crit make him a force to be reckoned with in ganks, on top of Track giving his team a significant vision advantage.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Like other invisibility heroes, he is very vulnerable to disables and invisibility detection, though not nearly to the same degree that Riki is since he can stay at range to use Shuriken Toss and Track. However, unlike nearly every other hero with invisibility, Bounty Hunter does not have an escape mechanism nor a hard disable, making him easy prey if detected and caught out.

    Clinkz, the Bone Fletcher 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Clinkz_6960.png
Voiced by: Michael Gregory

The Hoven is a peaceful forest realm located at the base of the Bleeding Hills and ruled by the benevolent king-mage Sutherex. This land was protected by Clinkz, a courageous warrior famous for his archery talent. When The Hoven was attacked by the vile demon Maraxiform, Sutherex used his magic to create an enchantment that instantly rewarded whoever slew the demon with immortality. Clinkz set out to fight Maraxiform, driving the fiery fiend to the gates of Hell itself. But as the demon lay mortally wounded, he unleashed one last blast of hellfire just as the archer fired the arrow that would kill him. In the very instant Maraxiform died, Clinkz was set ablaze by the demon's inextinguishable flames. However, Sutherex's spell of eternal life activated at the exact same moment, keeping Clinkz from the mercy of death and leaving him perpetually burning even as nothing but his bones remained.

Clinkz is a hero who specializes in ambushing unsuspecting foes and slaughtering them in a hail of arrows before they can properly react, aided by his Skeleton Archer minions. He can summon Skeleton Archers using Death Pact, which kills an enemy or neutral creep, increases his current and max health, and raises a Skeleton Archer in its place; Skeleton Archers are immobile, deal a percentage of Clinkz's attack damage, and share his attack range. His first ability, Strafe, grants Clinkz and his nearby Skeleton Archers a bonus to attack speed and attack range. His second ability, Tar Bomb, douses a target and all enemies within a radius of them in flammable tar that slows affected units and causes Clinkz and his Skeleton Archers to deal increased attack damage to them; nearby Skeleton Archers are also ordered to attack the primary target. Clinkz's ultimate, Skeleton Walk, allows him to temporarily turn invisible while increasing his movement speed and allowing him to pass through units unimpeded, perfect for scouting the map for easy targets and running from hairy situations. Once the invisibility breaks, he summons a squad of Skeleton Archers to aid him in combat, ensuring that his target will not walk away unscathed. Aghanim's Shard unlocks Burning Barrage, firing multiple piercing arrows that deal a percentage of Clinkz's attack damage and inflict the Tar Bomb debuff on enemies, while Aghanim's Scepter allows Clinkz to summon his Burning Army, raising several Skeleton Archers along a vector-targeted line, allowing Clinkz to dominate huge swathes of the battlefield.


  • Adaptation Species Change: Clinkz in the original DotA was an elf. His current species is unidentified.
  • Anti-Structure: Tar Bomb fully works against structures, letting Clinkz and his skeleton minions tear down towers at incredible speed when paired with Strafe.
  • The Archmage: Sutherex, who inadvertently made Clinkz a monster.
  • Arrows on Fire: When attacking an enemy affected by Tar Bomb, Clinkz uses Maraxiform's eternal fire to ignite his arrows.
  • Bad Powers, Good People: He's a skeleton wreathed in hellfire that he can use to ignite enemies, and can consume the lives of lesser creatures and summon skeletal minions. Despite all this, he's still firmly a heroic defender of his homeland.
  • Ballistic Bone: They don't call him the Bone Fletcher for nothing.
  • Blessed with Suck: Immortality sounds like a rather nice reward. Burning to death forever, less so. That being said, from his voice lines, he doesn't sound terribly bothered by the eternal pain and kinda just rolls with it, presumably having come to terms with the fact that this is his life now.
  • Creepy Good: He is a brave knight who continues to protect his peaceful kingdom, even after he became a skeleton lit on fire forever, according to the description of the Immortal item Maraxiform's Ire:
    Clinkz gifts the hellfire of Maraxiform's final breath to all who make threats against The Hoven.
  • Cursed with Awesome: Being perpetually burning seems like it would suck, and it does. But gameplay-wise, this is what allows Clinkz to light people and buildings on fire after hitting them with Tar Bomb.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Clinkz is a burning skeleton on constant fire that looks like a denizen of Hell, and can consume his minions for his own sake. He's a formerly tortured man who has come to terms to his state and resumes his business of killing enemies, but at heart (or whatever remains in his skeleton), he's still the same noble hero that defended his home from Maraxiform that earns the respect of several people that sees through his skeletal form.
  • Dem Bones: He's a skeleton. On fire. He can also summon more skeletons (also on fire) with Death Pact, Skeleton Walk and Burning Army.
  • Dynamic Entry: Ideally, the first sign of Clinkz in a teamfight should be him popping out of Skeleton Walk and instantly shredding the squishiest enemy hero with Tar Bomb and Burning Barrage. Add Burning Army for flavor.
  • Elite Army: While Clinkz's skeletons aren't the most durable, dying in two hits from heroes, they benefit from Strafe and Tar Bomb and their attack damage and attack range scale with his own, making it borderline suicidal to stay in their attack range and try to kill them. A Clinkz with a few levels and a Desolator under his belt can essentially turn a large area into a complete killzone with his ultimate and Burning Army as the skeletons simply incinerate anything that walks into their range, and even picking Clinkz off doesn't help much since you're still getting pepper-potted from six directions at once.
  • Foil: Made into another one for Drow Ranger following their respective reworks in 7.23 and 7.30 respectively. In addition to both of them favoring magical arrows of opposite elements, both rely on their ultimates for damage while having a channeled ability to mow down groups of enemies (Drow's Multishot hits a wider area and does more damage per arrow, but Clinkz's Burning Barrage fires more arrows, pierces through enemies, and benefits from attack modifiers). Drow has more options for locking down opponents with Gust and Frost Arrows, while Clinkz simply focuses on shock and awe, initiating from Skeleton Walk and dealing huge damage across huge swathes of the battlefield using Tar Bomb in tandem with skeleton archers and Burning Barrage.
  • Fragile Speedster: He's fairly fast and elusive with Skeleton Walk, but if caught out, it doesn't take much to take him down.
  • Glass Cannon: He can be killed in seconds by most heroes, even with Death Pact on, and the only survivability item commonly built by him is Black King Bar, but he does enough damage to kill them seconds before that.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: The King-Mage meant to reward whoever killed Maraxiform with immortality. As Clinkz was already partway through burning to death at this point, it wasn't exactly something he wanted.
  • Hellfire: Clinkz was lit on fire by the hellfire released by Maraxiform, which can never be extinguished.
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: How he sneaks around while constantly on fire, nobody knows.
  • Horned Humanoid: As can be seen in his portrait, Clinkz has a pair of horns jutting from his skull.
  • Human Resources: Death Pact instantly kills a creep, gives him bonus health, and summons a Skeleton Archer in its place. It can also be cast on his Skeleton Archers for an emergency heal.
  • Immortality Hurts: Is immortal, but constantly and eternally burning.
  • Invisibility: Skeleton Walk gives Clinkz temporary invisibility and speed, allowing him to roam and gank at will.
  • The Magocracy: The government Clinkz serves is ruled by a King-Mage.
  • Meaningful Name:
  • Multi Shot: With the appropriate level 25 talent, he attacks an enemy affected by Tar Bomb, Clinkz will fire another arrow at a different random target in his range. This also applies to the ones fired by his Skeleton Archers; when the two combine, things can get quite messy.
  • Mutual Kill: Clinkz's fatal arrow struck Maraxiform just as the demon slew him in return with hellfire... or would have, had King-Mage Sutherex's spell not kicked in at the worst possible time.
  • One-Hit Polykill: Arrows fired by Burning Barrage pierce through all enemies that they hit.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: One of the smaller heroes in the game, but he more than compensates with sheer damage output.
  • Playing with Fire: He doesn't actually have any Elemental Powers himself, but he can use the never-ending flames of the demon Maraxiform to light his arrows. One of his former abilities, Searing Arrows, says as much in its flavor text:
Clinkz simply lights his arrows from his flaming essence for quite the destructive effect.
  • Super-Speed: Skeleton Walk gives Clinkz a large boost to movement speed.
  • Surprisingly Sudden Death: Clinkz is one of the best heroes for surprise ganks: as soon as he finds a lone enemy hero while using Skeleton Walk, he can silence them with Orchid Malevolence (and later, Bloodthorn), which, combined with the massive bonus damage from Tar Bomb and Skeleton Archers can kill most heroes in seconds while preventing them from escaping.
  • The Turret Master: Clinkz's skillset centres around creating immobile skeletons that shoot at enemy heroes in their range.
  • Wreathed in Flames: He's a skeleton lit on fire, courtesy of Maraxiform doing his level best to take Clinkz with him and Sutherex inadvertently granting him immortality as he was being consumed by the flames.

    Traxex, the Drow Ranger 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/drow_ranger_icon_8.png
Voiced by: Gin Hammond

At the site of a bandit attack on a caravan, a Drow tribe found the sole survivor of the massacre, a young girl hiding behind the ruined wagons. Sympathetic to her plight, they took her in as one of their own and named her Traxex. Although she grew up among them and considered herself a Drow in spirit, she became disgusted by her appearance, which did not match that of her short and brutish adoptive family. Having mastered the art of stealth that the Drow prize so deeply, Traxex exiled herself from her people, fleeing into the forest to lead a solitary existence where her only company is the occasional wanderer lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her beauty.

Drow Ranger is an agility Carry-type hero, a deadly archer that decimates enemies with raw damage output. She is extremely fragile in the early phase of the game and her major weakness is her lack of escape skills, but if she receives sufficient farm and the proper items, she becomes an unstoppable archer that shuts down and snipes down her targets with extreme ease. She chases down her target by applying her first skill, Frost Arrows, which drastically slow the enemy's movement, preventing them from escaping her barrage. This spell can be set to auto-cast on every attack, or cast normally like a normal spell. Should the enemy get close to her, she can use her second skill, Gust, to blow away the enemy and silence them in the process, allowing Drow to pick them apart at her leisure. When facing numerous enemies, Drow Ranger can unleash a powerful Multishot, launching several barrages of arrows with increased damage compared to her base attack that also apply Frost Arrows for a longer duration. Her true deadliness manifests with her Ultimate, Marksmanship. This ability simply grants her a chance to deal increased damage and pierce through armor and evasion. This ability also augments Drow Ranger and nearby ranged allies with bonus Agility based on Drow's own Agility stat, making them deadlier in battle. However, all Marksmanship bonuses are annulled if there's an enemy Hero nearby, meaning Drow Ranger fights best from the back lines.

In Artifact, Drow Ranger is a green hero. She has a Precision Aura, a Continuous Effect which grants +1 Attack to allied heroes in the same lane. Her signature card, Gust, silences all heroes in lane for one round.

In Dota Underlords, Drow Ranger is a tier 1 hero. Her ability, Precision Aura, passively increases the attack speed of nearby allies.


  • '90s Anti-Hero: The Dread Retribution Arcana shapes her into one: ruthless, cold, and seeking to inflict retribution on those who deserve it, all to try and hold onto her sanity against the visions she got from the Mania's Mask.
  • Adaptation Species Change: The original version of Traxex in DotA was an actual drow right out of Forgotten Realms. Her current version is explicitly of a different species.
  • All of the Other Reindeer: Subverted. She certainly thinks herself ugly and isolated. However, it's unknown how the Drow reacted on her strangeness, whether her isolation is self-inflicted or she's bullied into it.
  • All Your Powers Combined: An ability version. Drow's 7.23 version of Marksmanship effectively combines three of her old abilities: the armor-piercing attacks from the previous version, the Agility bonus of her old Marksmanship, and an aura component based on Precision Aura.
  • Ambiguously Human: Her lore states that she isn't an actual Drow, and she looks fairly human except for her dark blue skin. Her actual race is never mentioned.
  • Anti-Regeneration: Aghanim's Scepter causes Frost Arrows to apply a Hypothermia stack to enemy heroes, reducing their regeneration by 10% per stack.
  • Armor-Piercing Attack: Marksmanship grants Drow Ranger's attacks a chance to ignore armor and evasion.
  • Art Evolution: Drow received an updated model in early 2019.
  • Artwork and Game Graphics Segregation: When Drow Ranger was remodelled in 2019 (which, among others, gave her a more conservative outfit), the loading screens in which she appears were not updated, and still depict her in her old outfit.
  • Blow You Away: Gust, in addition to being a silence, also blows enemies far away from Drow Ranger. This deals no damage, but keeps her enemies at a distance where she can deal even more damage.
  • Boring, but Practical: A simple carry. Her only source of damage is her auto-attacks, but passives, auras, and natural stat gains make it an amazing source of damage.
  • Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Slightly; she lives in the woods alone and is a master of archery, but she also is excited to wear clothes from the people who walk through her woods and pretends to talk to people from time to time.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Drow has a lot to say about her past. Let's see... true family died in an accident, feels completely unwelcome to her new family and has to live in isolation as a result, possibly going mad from the isolation...
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Usually, Drow are dark, evil elves. However, Drow here is a race of midget Gonks, with unclear morality values, so it's nearly impossible to judge Traxex from her race. Traxex herself, while gloomy and borderline insane due to isolation, is not the typical 'evil drow' either despite her appearance, she's dedicated to protect her new forest home, though shows no interest in goody-two-shoes activities. Even after she become more unhinged in the Arcana version, Drow mostly stuck with anti-heroic Pay Evil unto Evil instead of becoming full blown evil.
  • Deadpan Snarker: If she's not accidentally being sexual, her lines are pretty much snarking at others.
  • Field Power Effect: Marksmanship gives bonus agility to nearby allies.
  • Forest Ranger: This is her job taken after distancing herself from the Drow, which fit her like a glove because Drow in this universe are gifted in sneakiness in addition to her strange affinity to woods.
  • Geo Effects: Glacier creates a hill of ice beneath Drow Ranger that provides any unit standing on it (usually herself) bonus attack range and high ground advantage.
  • Glass Cannon: Does the most raw damage in the game, but is easily taken down by a good nuker or just about anyone that can actually get close.
  • Go Mad from the Isolation: Implied to be the case in the flavor text for one of her cosmetics.
    Mania's Mask: To wander the woods knowing you are alone, an orphan of those who birthed you, rejected by those who raised you, hidden from those who might give warmth and comfort... this is a path to madness.
    • This forms a basis of her Arcana Dread Retribution, where aside of catching glimpse of the madness through the Mania's Mask, she witnessed a lot of horrors that threaten to drive her into complete madness, resulting her being more in-tune to kill people and gaining Glowing Eyes of Doom, all to overcome the darker impulses caused by her own Dark and Troubled Past.
  • Harmless Freezing: Frost Arrows adds minor damage next to the slow, though it's inconsequential compared to Drow's own attack damage. For a long time, it actually did no extra damage. Averted with Aghanim's Scepter, which makes it inflict Hypothermia and reduce the victim's regeneration.
  • Head-Turning Beauty: A lot of her lines are played up as being very sexual. She is also described by whoever had an encounter on her in her forest to be an incredibly beautiful ranger.
  • I Am Not Pretty: Although she's a stunning Ms. Fanservice, she grew up believing that she was hideously deformed due to being raised by a race of short, troll-like beings, to the point where she exiled herself in shame. Although she now lives alone in the forest, travelers lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her speak of her impossibly beautiful appearance, even though she'd likely say otherwise.
  • An Ice Person: She can add ice to her arrows with Frost Arrows.
  • Impossibly-Low Neckline: Set her neckline just an inch lower and you have a game rated 16 and above.
  • "Instant Death" Radius: A farmed Drow Ranger hits very hard and very fast, and packs both a slowing attack and a silence. If you can't close the gap quickly, she'll slaughter you before you get close.
  • In the Hood: Not necessarily the originator (it belonged to her old model, the Warcraft III Dark Ranger), but Traxex retained this design, and any MOBA archers who wear a hood tend to get compared with her because of it.
  • Interspecies Adoption: From an unknown 'Elvish' race, adopted by Drow that look more like midgets.
  • Kryptonite Is Everywhere: With the abundance of heroes that can use invisibility or gap closing skills, and the fact that anybody can buy a Blink Dagger or Shadow Blade to ambush her, playing Drow Ranger requires careful judgement and Combat Pragmatist tendencies against experienced players without getting stomped on.
  • Leotard of Power: Her outfit resembles a leotard.
  • Literally Shattered Lives: When an enemy affected by Hypothermia dies, it shatters and releases ice crystals that damage other nearby enemies.
  • Long-Range Fighter: Drow's ultimate ability, Marksmanship, is only active when there's no enemy hero near her, so she's much less powerful in a fight if the enemy can get close to her.
  • Mage Marksman: Traxex supplements her archery with a form of frost magic. Gameplay-wise, after her reworks she's fairly dependent on mana to mow enemies down with Multishot and Gust.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Not only does she have a sultry voice, she possesses a rather great body as well, which is especially visible with the Oaths of the Dragonborn set or Dread Retribution Arcana.
  • Multi Shot: Literally the name of her third ability, which mows down enemies with several volleys of long-ranged arrows.
  • Mutual Disadvantage: Against heroes that rely on stealth or mobility like Riki and Slark. They can close the distance between them and Drow, nullifying her Marksmanship buff, but if Drow lands Gust on them, they are knocked away from her and silenced for up to six seconds, which is usually more than enough time for Drow and her teammates to pick them off.
  • One-Hit Kill: During pre-6.50, Marksmanship instantly killed non-ancient creeps if it procced. It was removed, reinserted in 7.20, and removed again in 7.23.
  • Our Elves Are Different: Zig-zagged. Although Traxex certainly has the appearance of a Dark Elf from most other settings, Drow in this universe are short, ugly and troll-like, while Traxex herself was a child of another race (though which race she was born of is left unsaid). She was an actual elf in the original mod, though, using the model of the Dark Ranger (an undead High Elf).
  • Power Nullifier: With Gust, she silences enemies caught in it.
  • The Quiet One: Most heroes' responses force the player to turn the volume down. Hers force the player to turn it up.
  • Recursive Ammo: With Aghanim's Scepter, Drow's arrows split into two more on contact with an enemy.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Windranger's red. The stoic and quiet.
  • The Rival: With Windranger. They kind of work like Foils as well, Drow Ranger has a rather gloomy outlook compared to the more outspoken Windranger. In terms of gameplay, Drow Ranger has high raw damage output but she is limited by her fragility and lack of utility. In contrast, Windranger has a stun, a long range nuke, and an escape ability, and a curiously high strength growth, but her damage output is mediocre as a result.
  • Shadow Archetype: Her Arcana quotes imply that she ends up becoming this to her rival, Windranger, who actually found out about her true parents' demise but then decides to just let bygones be bygones and move on to the future being chipper and cheerful. When Drow Ranger found out about her parents' killers after donning the Mask of Madness, she managed to stay sane, but became more unhinged and resorted to violence to whoever is responsible, looking for the murderer of her parents and swearing revenge to whoever does, starting by killing off wicked people that deserve to die, in order to keep the madness left behind by the Mask of Madness from completely consuming her. Drow ends up being more bound by her own Dark and Troubled Past compared to her chipper rival.
  • Trick Arrow: Frost Arrows slow the target and add a little damage.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Drow Ranger is one of those heroes that's based entirely around her basic attack; Gust is the only thing she has that doesn't improve her DPS in some way, and even her main nuke Multishot is based on her attack damage. While technically her Agility growth is one of the lowest among Agility heroes, simply reaching level 6 drastically increases her damage output to the point where she just right-clicks enemies to death.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: While Drow can put out absurd amounts of damage due to Marksmanship giving her absurd amounts of Agility and armor-piercing attacks, it becomes absolutely useless the second an enemy Hero gets within 400 radius of her (her attack range is only marginally longer than that at 625 - this makes the attack-range increasing Dragon Lance an important item for her). This, combined with her lack of escape abilities, makes her utterly useless in any teamfight where the enemy has half a brain and gets close to her.
  • Wings Do Nothing: The Oaths of the Dragonborn set gives Traxex a single wing which obviously does not allow her to fly.

    Xin, the Ember Spirit 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ember_spirit_8427.png
Voiced by: Dave Fennoy

Deep within the Wailing Mountains lies the Fortress of Flares, the home of the great warrior-poet Xin. For decades, Xin taught the mantras of the Bonds of the Guardian Flame to young warriors-in-training. However, his training of warriors earned him rivals, and in the twilight years of his life, he was slain by one of them. With Xin dead, his students scattered, and his funeral pyre was left abandoned in the empty fortress. But like the embers of a dying fire, Xin's teachings persisted in the centuries afterward, kept alive by his students and their descendants. Touched by Xin's lasting legacy, the Burning Celestial used its flaming body to reignite the pyre ash, turning itself into a fiery image of the teacher and seeking to spread his mantras once again.

Xin the Ember Spirit is a carry hero with tremendous mobility and high teamfight presence. His speed can allow him to easily dominate the battlefield while evading any attempted counterattack, but he can just as easily fall if caught out due to his frailty. Searing Chains unleashes two fiery bolas around the Ember Spirit, tying down two unfortunate victims and dealing damage over time. However, the targets are chosen at random, minimizing its effectiveness if creeps are involved. Sleight of Fist, Xin's main damaging ability, has him dashing between all enemies in a large area and attacking them all, letting him engage enemies from long range and, once farmed, completely devastate them without putting himself in danger. Enemy spellcasters will not find the Ember Spirit easy prey, as his Flame Guard will block a significant amount of magic damage, leaving him unscathed. This fiery shield also radiates heat that burns away the health of nearby enemies, making it dangerous to approach Ember Spirit, especially with the very real threat of Searing Chains. If he needs to escape or pursue enemies, Ember Spirit can use his ultimate ability to place a Fire Remnant and then dash out to its position, detonating the remnant for area damage in the process. With the ability to place up to three Fire Remnants in quick succession, Ember Spirit can quickly traverse the battlefield, striking with the force of a raging fire and disappearing in a flash. He may start out weak, but if left to amass his strength, Ember Spirit's spark becomes a raging wildfire, taking over the battle and consuming the enemy.


  • Achilles' Heel: Because Xin is so frail and relies on his casting abilities to remain mobile, silences can greatly debilitate him, allowing his foes to pin him down.
  • Adaptation Species Change: Like Earth and Storm Spirit, he was originally a Pandaren.
  • Always Accurate Attack: One of Ember Spirit's level 20 talents grant him True Strike, preventing him from missing his attacks by any reason.
  • Anti-Magic: Flame Guard absorbs a set limit of magical damage, and continually burns everything in a radius around Xin.
  • Chain Pain: Searing Chains creates 2 fiery bolas that wrap around 2 random enemies next to Xin, dealing damage and entangling them.
  • Critical Existence Failure: Flame Guard will continue to burn for its maximum damage over time up until it has been completely exhausted by enemy spell damage. It doesn't matter whether Xin has absorbed 0 magic damage or 499, the shield will burn for the same amount.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: There's a fair burden of knowledge that goes with using Xin's abilities effectively, but which can greatly magnify his effectiveness.
    • While simply spamming Sleight of Fist is fairly easy, it can hit targets through the fog of war, and Searing Chains can be cast in the middle of jumps. This allows good Xin players to disable enemies from a surprisingly long distance since they can jump to a target with Sleight of Fist and root them with Searing Chains in the 0.25 second timing window that Xin is next to the target he's attacking.
    • Fire Remnant will move at a fixed multiplier of Ember Spirit's current speed. This means that bad Ember Spirits can often be paralyzed by slows, since those will affect the speed at which his Fire Remnants move (which, in turn, increases the vulnerability time while Xin waits for the Fire Remnant to reach its destination). Additionally, optimal movement requires a fair amount of planning, particularly since you can only carry three Fire Remnants at a time and you will only arrive at the one you targeted, and Ember Spirit can dash to a Remnant while it's moving (which can result in landing short of your destination if you cast too early). But mastering all of these aspects allows players to take advantage of Xin's high mobility to its utmost, by buffing his movement speed just before deploying a remnant in order to maximize its travel speed, placing remnants in key locations for critical escapes or to ambush enemies (or even both), and so on.
  • Dual Wielding: Xin wields two swords in battle.
  • Dynamic Entry: Xin can at any time dash out to his Fire Remnants, exploding them for area of effect damage.
  • Elemental Armor: Flame Guard creates a shroud of flames around Xin that blocks magic damage.
  • Fireball Eyeballs
  • Flash Step: Sleight of Fist works similarly to Juggernaut's Omnislash; Ember Spirit jumps from enemy to enemy, dealing damage, and returns to his starting point in only a few seconds. Fire Remnant also allows him to dash across the battlefield at high speed.
  • Fragile Speedster: Sleight of Fist and Fire Remnant alone let him zip around the battlefield and wreck just about anything he encounters, but he can't stand up to prolonged damage.
  • Fusion Dance: Between a human swordsman and a Celestial.
  • Glass Cannon: An Ember Spirit with enough damage items (and a Battle Fury or three) can potentially wipe out an entire enemy team with just Sleight of Fist alone. However, discounting Flame Guard, which can negate only a finite amount of magic damage, Xin has mediocre Strength and rarely builds durability items. If he's ever chain-stunned, he can be killed quite quickly.
  • Glowing Eyes: As can be seen in his model.
  • Invulnerable Attack: Using Sleight of Fist turns Ember Spirit invulnerable until he has attacked all the targets.
  • Legacy Character: The Burning Celestial formed itself into an image of the original Xin from his funerary ashes and took on his identity.
  • Long-Range Fighter: Despite being a melee hero, Ember Spirit is ill-suited for close-range manfighting. During a fight, he relies on spamming Sleight of Fist from a distance to deal damage and tie down heroes with Searing Chains, only closing in to chase fleeing enemies with Fire Remnant.
  • Magic Knight: He can either be built as a physical damage carry, taking advantage of the synergy between Sleight of Fist and Battle Fury/Maelstrom to deal a large amount of splash damage to the enemy, or a nuker, building items like Kaya or Veil of Discord and Aghanim's Shard to burn enemies down with Fire Remnant and Flame Guard.
  • Master Swordsman
  • Mechanically Unusual Class: He can be played as a physical nuker by building raw damage items with little to no survivability, and then spamming Sleight of Fist.
  • Non-Indicative Name: Ember Spirit's Rapiers of the Burning God cosmetic swords are far too wide to qualify as rapiers. That being said, they're clearly based on the Divine Rapier (which Ember Spirit can use to particularly devastating effect) rather than the real-life sword.
  • Old Master: In his backstory, Xin is said to have trained three generations of acolytes before his death.
  • Playing with Fire: All of his abilities except Sleight of Fist have something to do with fire.
  • Random Number God: Searing Chains chooses 2 random targets around Xin. In a teamfight, it can potentially lock down two enemy heroes, but it loses much effectiveness when there are creeps, illusions or summoned minions involved.
  • Sealed Badass in a Can: His ashes were interred in a temple until his resurrection.
  • Some Dexterity Required: As is the theme among the four Spirits, Ember Spirit is a high-mobility Hero that requires great reflexes and high APM in order to utilize properly. The mechanics revolving around Sleight of Fist, Searing Chains and Fire Remnant require precise timing and quick reaction times in order to make the most out of them.
  • Spam Attack: Sleight of Fist, with its low cooldown and mana cost.
  • Super-Speed: When using Activate Fire Remnant, Xin can dash out through all of his Fire Remnants around the map, exploding them for area damage, before arriving at the selected remnant.
  • Surprisingly Sudden Death: Searing Chain + 3 charges of Flame Remnants = dead enemy. Alternatively, if he's building for attack damage, one Sleight of Fist that procs a Daedalus crit can be enough.
  • Verbal Tic: Almost all of his responses are only four words long.
    "Balance in all things."
  • Warrior Poet
  • Weak, but Skilled: What Xin lacks in upfront brute strength he makes up for with a very versatile kit. Flame Guard absorbs magic damage (traditionally an Agility carry's greatest weakness), Sleight of Fist lets him turn invulnerable and deal bonus damage to enemy Heroes very quickly while not giving them a chance to respond, and Fire Remnant gives him a great deal of mobility that allows him to dance around his opponents as needed.
  • Wreathed in Flames: Xin can surround himself in fire with Flame Guard, which blocks magical damage and burns enemies near him.
  • You Have Researched Breathing: Ember Spirit requires a cosmetic item to learn how to put on his hat instead of keeping it slung across his back.

    Darkterror, the Faceless Void 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/a47bdc2c9485e37cae3b3ba609c49f02.png
Voiced by: Dave Fennoy

Darkterror, the Faceless Void, is a mysterious being from Claszureme, a dimension that exists outside of time. Because time does not flow in Claszureme as it does on our plane, time is of little consequence to the Faceless Void, granting him the power to manipulate time itself and an understanding of time beyond that of mortal comprehension. Why the Faceless Void has come to this reality to participate in the War of the Ancients is not clear, but the repercussions of the conflict seem to have impacts far beyond this world.

An iconic carry and initiator hero, the Faceless Void is strong during most of the game, but if the enemies let him farm, he will end up making his enemies regret the times spent not to harass him by manipulating the fabric of time itself. With his first skill, Time Walk, Faceless Void dashes a short distance while restoring his health to how it was a few seconds ago. This spell is perfect for escaping dangerous situations, as it allows him to undo any damage that was dealt to him recently. With his second skill, Time Dilation, Faceless Void punishes his foes for using their skills recklessly by halting their cooldown timers for a short time while slowing their movement and attack speed by an amount which increases the more skills the victim has on cooldown. His attacks, when powered with his passive ability Time Lock, will not only stun the enemy in place, but also summons another Faceless Void from another timeline to instantly inflict another attack. And when he gets near the enemy ranks, he can finally drop his game-changing ultimate, Chronosphere, which traps everyone in a dome where time stops and nothing moves... except himself. Inside the dome, Faceless Void gets the privilege of moving at an increased speed and beating down any enemies caught in the sphere. However, he must be wary of where he casts this spell as it freezes friend and foe alike. When playing Faceless Void, time is always on your side; take your time to farm up, and none will escape the wrath of Claszureme.

In Dota Underlords, Faceless Void is the Ace of Assassins, granting Assassins a chance to dodge both physical and magical damage. His ability, Chronocube, stuns all units, friend or foe, in a large square area, leaving only himself unaffected and increasing his speed in the cube.


  • Achilles' Heel: Compared to most melee Agility carries, Faceless Void is incredibly susceptible to silences, which prevent him from dropping Chronosphere and undoing damage with Time Walk.
  • Another Dimension: He hails from one.
  • Armor-Piercing Attack: Chronosphere only fails to affect units that are invulnerable, meaning that it doesn't give a whit that its victims were debuff immune when Faceless Void casts it.
  • Art Evolution: Enforced. One of the TI4 Compendium stretch goals included a vote by Compendium owners to choose a hero to remodel, which Faceless Void won.
  • Beehive Barrier: The Immortal Mace of Aeons turns Chronosphere into a barrier of tessellating hexagons.
  • The Blank: He doesn't have eyes or a nose.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: Initially inverted with the Mace of Aeons cosmetic item, an ultra rare drop from the first Immortal Treasure of The International 2016. It turns Chronosphere into a Beehive Barrier... which glowed at the centre to the point it was all but impossible to see the heroes caught inside it until it had to be fixed.
  • Carry a Big Stick
  • Combat Clairvoyance: Time Walk and his level 25 talent Backtrack allow him to dodge damage in the past after experiencing it. Therefore he can instantly "heal" back even the most damaging attacks unless they were lethal. This includes magical attacks, take note.
  • Cooldown Manipulation: Time Dilation and Chronosphere pause all ability and item cooldowns of units affected by them.
  • Cool Gate: Chronosphere:
    "When a rift opens to Claszureme, all poor souls caught within will likely never return."
  • Cthulhumanoid: He used to look like one in DotA, when he had the model of the Faceless Ones. Unsurprisingly, they were creatures created by Eldritch Abominations who were essentially Lovecraft expies. His cosmetic Tentacular Timelord set and Claszian Apostasy Arcana item give him Cthulhu-style facial tentacles that greatly resemble his original model.
  • Dynamic Entry: Faceless Void's first ability, Time Walk, allows him to leap short distances, becoming invulnerable for the duration of the jump. Any enemies caught within the path have their movement speed slowed. This is usually followed up immediately by his ultimate, Chronosphere. With an upgrade from Aghanim's Scepter, it also applies Time Lock to anyone caught in Time Walk, leaving anyone in the radius helpless as he either whack you down with even more Time Lock to proc or use Chronosphere to lock them down.
  • Eldritch Location: His home dimension Claszureme, where the properties of time are distorted. Void's abilities take advantage of this by using it as an Extradimensional Shortcut and undoing damage with Time Walk and opening a rift to Claszureme in order to stop time with Chronosphere.
  • Extradimensional Shortcut: He can temporarily pass through Claszureme and reappear at a target location with Time Walk.
  • Eyeless Face: His only facial feature is his mouth. Despite this, he is apparently capable of seeing as any other being might... and more than that as well.
    Faceless Void: Time is a river with many eddies. I have seen its headwaters, and I have seen its currents reach the sea.
  • Friendly Fireproof: Zig-zagged with Chronosphere. It will freeze both enemies and allies, but will not affect any units also belonging to Void himself, such as summons and illusions, even if it's stolen and used by an enemy Rubick. Additionally, even though it will reveal invisible enemies, invisible allies will remain invisible despite not being able to move. However, the fact that it can disable allies can lead to frustrating situations where Faceless Void gets his own team stuck in it while his enemies are free to pound on them, or stopping other heroes when they're doing more damage.
  • Glass Cannon: Though this is no longer an optimal build since 6.86, low-level players often still play him as a hard carry who stacks damage items with little to no durability, as his ultimate leaves the enemy team helpless and unable to harm him. However, if he ever does get caught, he'll usually get blown up quite quickly due to lack of survivability items (even moreso after the loss of Backtrack).
  • Humanoid Aliens
  • Locked Out of the Fight: Save for a few rare special cases, it is impossible to escape from a Chronosphere once disabled by it. Even spells and items such as Force Staff and Earth Spirit's Geomagnetic Grip are unable to penetrate it.
  • Magikarp Power: Faceless Void has one of the weakest lane presences in the game, possessing only a blink, a slow and a passive with a very low proc chance. Even once he hits level 6, the only threat he poses is locking down enemies in early teamfights or ganks, as he possesses very little damage output by himself without items. However, once he gets enough farm, he can jump into fights, lock down entire teams, bash them into oblivion, and dodge a sizable amount of damage from anybody left alive.
  • Monstrous Humanoid
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast
  • Pungeon Master: Virtually all of his lines make puns involving time, or faces.
  • Purple Is Powerful: Faceless Void's skin and abilities all have a purple tint, and he's a being from another dimension with control over time.
  • Random Number God: His level 25 talent Backtrack can often become this, especially if you manage to dodge deadly nukes like Lina's Laguna Blade, Centaur's Double Edge, Lion's Finger of Death, and so on. The same applies to Time Lock early on, before Void gets enough attack speed to proc it reliably and avert this trope.
  • Reality Warper
  • Required Secondary Powers: Faceless Void has an innate immunity to Chronosphere, no matter if the spell is cast by himself, an enemy Rubick that manages to steal it, or anyone in Ability Draft.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Time Walk allows him to heal back the damage he'd taken during the last 2 seconds. This includes auto-attacks, spells, and pretty much anything that would otherwise subtract from his HP bar (minus some HP Removal abilities). If not stunned or silenced, Void can end up shrugging off massive damage nukes, although he still feels their secondary effects such as slows.
  • Shout-Out: His default outfit has a green heart-shaped stone on the belt. Additionally, when casting Chronosphere, Void borrows the standard pose used by Dio when stopping time ("ZA WARUDO" not included, unfortunately). His new Time Lock also resembles a Stand power!
  • Sphere of Power: Faceless Void's ultimate, Chronosphere, completely disables everything within its radius for several seconds, no matter if the target has debuff immunity or not, while leaving Faceless Void and any controlled units free to attack.
  • Super-Speed: Faceless Void can move at a 1000 speed inside of Chronosphere, and can path through units.
  • Time Master: All of Void's abilities manipulate time to some degree.
  • Time Stands Still: Everyone inside the Chronosphere is frozen in time, except Void himself and units under his control.
  • Too Awesome to Use: Chronosphere comes with one of the longest cooldowns in the game to offset its massive power, and Faceless Void's ideal teamfight is to trap the enemy team with it and then bash them into oblivion. As such, he needs to be judicious about when and how to use it so that he doesn't get caught on the back foot when a real fight breaks out and to avoid screwing over his own team.
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: None of Void's sets come with a shirt.
  • When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Early game, when he hasn't got enough damage items, Faceless Void's sole contribution to fights is just Chronosphere, nothing more. The Aghanim's Scepter into Refresher Orb build takes this further, sacrificing Void's damage output to maximise the effectiveness of Chronosphere. Nevertheless, a well-placed Chronosphere is extremely deadly even at low levels, disabling the entire enemy team for up to 4 seconds, leaving them at the mercy of Void's team.

    Aurel, the Gyrocopter 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Gyrocopter_8551.png
Voiced by: Nolan North

Having fought in his fair share of wars, Aurel was ready for retirement. On top of his monetary pension, he also obtained plans on how to build a Gyrocopter, the world's first non-magical flying vehicle. Having all the time and resources he could possibly need, Aurel moved to the Ash Archipelago, a remote tropical paradise, and set to work on being the first to ever finish these schematics. But after a decade of work, he had only failures to show for it. And yet, he persevered, and he was surprised when one day, the machine actually managed to hover in place without exploding! Aurel was soon enjoying the thrills of flight, but his joy was cut short when a stray cannonball from a passing ship damaged his craft and sent him crashing into the sea. Once he made it back to land, Aurel started rebuilding the Gyrocopter, this time with plenty of weapons with which to get his revenge.

The herd hitter of Dota 2, Gyrocopter can dish enormous AoE damage, be it with his skills or auto-attacks. With Rocket Barrage, Gyrocopter fires dozens of mini-rockets at nearby targets. Should all these attacks be focused on one enemy, the damage dealt can be very high. Homing Missile drops a missile which chases its target to the ends of the map, gaining in speed and power the longer it flies until it hits, stunning and damaging its victim. If the missile's target dies before it reaches them, the missile will seek out a new target, prioritizing heroes and chase them instead. Flak Cannon causes Gyrocopter's next several attacks to hit every foe in range for full damage. And finally, his ultimate ability Call Down launches two missiles into the air which crash down to deal damage and slow in a large radius. The first missile deals heavy damage and a light slow, while the second missile deals light damage and a heavy slow.

In Dota Underlords, Gyrocopter is the Ace of Deadeyes, causing Deadeye attacks to pierce through their targets, damaging the foes standing behind. His ability, Call Down, fires two missiles which deal damage and slow enemies within a large area.


  • Ace Pilot
  • Acrophobic Bird: Aurel's Gyrocopter obviously has wings and can fly, but for balance reasons cannot use them to bypass terrain.
  • Adaptation Species Change: A dwarf in DotA and a Keen in Dota 2.
  • Adventurer Outfit: Of the airman variety.
  • BFG: The weapons mounted on his gyrocopter.
  • Big, Bulky Bomb: Homing Missile has this appearance.
  • Bungling Inventor: He went through numerous explosions before finally creating a working aircraft.
  • Death from Above: Call Down calls an airstrike over the target area, after which two missiles will arrive in succession.
  • Destructible Projectiles: Homing Missile travels relatively slowly for a projectile and can be destroyed by right-click attacks.
  • Disc-One Nuke: Rocket Barrage is among the most damaging skills if there's only one available target, so it often results in first blood during a 0-minute rune clash.
  • Do a Barrel Roll: Gyrocopter has a taunt called "Do a Barrel Roll", which does Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: He created the very first flying machine in this world, which would definitely qualify him as one. And almost immediately after that, he figured out how to strap a truckload of guns onto it while still remaining airborne.
  • Grumpy Old Man: He's very much the stereotypical "old coot".
    Gyrocopter: "Get off my lawn!"
  • Herd-Hitting Attack: Gyrocopter is considered one of the best teamfight carries in the game, since Flak Cannon, Rocket Barrage and Call Down deal huge AoE damage; in the mid game they are enough to kill all the supports and leave little health to the enemy carry, unless the enemies counter-initiate or initiate first. When Gyrocopter is farmed, Flak Cannon is insanely good. Right-click down the enemy carry while their supports are melting at the same time? They just can't take a teamfight while your BKB is up.
  • Homing Projectile: Homing Missile chases its target until it hits or is destroyed.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: Rocket Barrage launches 30 missiles from Gyrocopter over the span of 3 seconds.
  • Making a Spectacle of Yourself: Of course, when you're in an open-topped plane, a pair of aviator goggles is a matter of practicality in addition to style.
  • Manly Facial Hair: Quite possibly the most magnificent moustache in the game, it flares out far enough to billow in the wind.
  • Meaningful Name: Aurel Vlaicu was a Romanian pioneer of early flight.
  • More Dakka: Rocket Barrage + Flak Cannon + Aghanim's upgrade Side Gunner. Ouch.
  • Multi-Directional Barrage: Flak Cannon hits every single hostile unit within its radius, which is much wider than Gyrocopter's attack range. Since it deals Gyrocopter's auto-attack damage and never misses, a popular last resort build involves buying him Divine Rapier for an easy, but risky Total Party Kill.
  • Old Soldier: He's ten years into retirement, which would make him quite old by any reasonable standard. He also pilots a flying machine loaded to the brim with weapons and knows how to use every single one of them.
  • Painfully Slow Projectile: Homing Missile starts out very slow and doesn't get much faster, meaning that a coordinated team can shoot it down before it hits. However, it still moves fast enough that you need more than one person attacking the missile to bring it down successfully, and melee heroes might as well not bother.
  • Pointy Ears
  • Retired Badass: Aurel is a retired member of an unnamed military force, but he and his Gyrocopter still have what it takes to kick ass.
  • Scarf of Asskicking
  • Science Hero: Relies entirely on his homemade vehicle and gadgets in combat.
  • Shout-Out:
    Gyrocopter (meeting Viper): "Holy shit, it's Viper!"
  • Super-Persistent Missile: Homing Missile never stops until it hits or gets destroyed.
  • Those Magnificent Flying Machines: His invention, the gyrocopter. Especially prominent with the Swooping Elder set, which is a literal flying ship.
  • Trade Snark: The projectile fired by Homing Missile is officially known as The Bombâ„¢.
  • Vehicular Assault: His M.O.
  • You Remind Me of X: Killing an enemy hero would remind him of his boss, whom he doesn't seems to appreciate.
    Gyrocopter (upon killing a hero): "You remind me of my old boss. Rot in hell!"

    Hoodwink 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hoodwink_icon.png
"Who said you could stroll in my woods?"
Voiced by: Brooke Williams

Born in the forested outskirts of the kingdom of Krimwohl, Hoodwink's childhood was cut brutally short by the kingdom's expansion. When Krimwohl's residents sought to use the forest's resources to fuel the kingdom's industries, Hoodwink's people were ousted and forced to take up refuge in the dangerous Tomo'kan mistwoods to the north. There, Hoodwink grew up to a life of banditry, ingratiating herself with some and terrorizing others. Eventually, she returned her birthplace to see what had become of her kin who remained in Krimwohl, only to discover that the monsters that destroyed her childhood home were merely ordinary people - a far cry from the horrors she effortlessly outwitted in the dark forests of Tomo'kan every day. Returning to live in the mistwoods as before, Hoodwink now strikes against any who dare threaten the woodlands while guiding others like her to restart their lives.

A crafty and elusive assassin, Hoodwink darts among the trees and sows chaos among groups of foes. She fights best in the forest, but is still a force to be reckoned with outside it. Her Acorn Shot launches an empowered attack that bounces between foes, dealing bonus damage and drastically slowing them; the ability can also be ground-targeted, whereupon it will spawn a tree at the target location, giving her trees on demand to use with her other abilities. Bushwhack throws a net that stuns and damages enemies in its area while binding them to a tree in its area of effect; however, it does nothing if it doesn't hit a tree. Scurry passively gives Hoodwink evasion while near trees, and can be activated to temporarily grant a speed boost and allow her to walk through units and trees. Fleeing foes rarely get far thanks to her ultimate ability, Sharpshooter. With this ability, Hoodwink charges up a powerful shot that deals heavy damage and Breaks the first enemy hero it hits at an exceedingly long range, with its damage increasing depending on how long she charges it; Hoodwink herself is also knocked back by the force of the shot when it is released.


  • Awesome Aussie: She has a very Australian accent and mannerisms, and lives in a Wild Wilderness overrun with invasive beasts and home to various deadly flora and fauna.
  • Blood Knight: Hoodwink fights, more often than not, because she thinks it's fun.
  • Charged Attack: Sharpshooter charges for up to 5 seconds or until Hoodwink fires with the subspell, before releasing a shot whose power increases based on how long it's been charged. While charging, she can turn in place to aim, albeit at a reduced turn rate.
  • Civilized Animal: Despite having a general animal form (to the point of scampering around on all fours), Hoodwink also possesses human-like intelligence and mannerisms.
  • Combos: Use Bushwhack to tie enemies to a tree, then hit them with Acorn Shot while they're stunned and Sharpshooter to pick off stragglers. If there aren't trees nearby, Acorn Shot can plant one to use for Bushwhack afterward.
  • Cute and Psycho: She's a cheery little squirrel who routinely spouts bloodthirsty threats or desires to kill something in the same tone as a kid wanting to go outside and play.
  • Damage-Increasing Debuff: Hunter's Boomerang causes enemies to take 25% more magical damage, and one of Hoodwink's level 20 talents causes her right-click attacks to reduce armor by 4.
  • Does Not Like Magic: Hoodwink holds a fairly low opinion of wizards, seeing them as arrogant morons. The fact that Tomo'kan is littered with remnants of wizarding trials gone wrong doesn't help her viewpoint. Granted, she's not as fanatically obsessed with it as, say, Anti-Mage, but the sentiment is still there.
  • Fantastic Racism: On account of what happened to her home, Hoodwink really hates the Keen. Even if she's partnered with one, she'll threaten to kill them after the battle.
    Hoodwink, killing Tinker: Nothing personal, Tinker. I'm just prejudiced.
  • Fragile Speedster: When in the forest, Hoodwink has immense mobility due to Scurry letting her dart through trees, and has a chance to evade attacks as well. However, a disable and a few nukes thrown her way will bring her down very quickly.
  • Friendly Sniper: She's very cheerful and outgoing, at least to those that get on her good side. And she's also packing a powerful crossbow that can shoot from a huge distance.
  • Furry Reminder: She apparently stashes nuts and acorns like a real squirrel, which is why she never runs out of acorns to use for Acorn Shot.
  • Glass Cannon: Hoodwink's spell damage is nothing to scoff at, especially since Acorn Shot scales with her attack damage and attack modifiers; however, her pitiful Strength growth means she can't take nearly as much damage in return.
  • Instrument of Murder: Hoodwink's The Strings of Suradan Immortal item is both a crossbow and a lute, and comes packaged with a taunt during which Hoodwink uses it to play music.
  • It's Personal: She holds a grudge against Snapfire, blaming her for peddling gunpowder to Krimwohl and making the people there bold enough to invade Hoodwink's homelands while her own people could do little to stop them.
  • Nature Hero: Hoodwink fights to protect her native forest, and her kit is also very well-suited to taking advantage of wooded areas, with Scurry's passive element and Bushwack only being effective when trees are nearby.
  • Pinball Projectile: Her Acorn Shot bounces between enemies, slowing and damaging them.
  • Precision-Guided Boomerang: Hunter's Boomerang returns to Hoodwink after hitting its target, dealing damage to enemies that it passes through or hits, except if blocked by Linken's Sphere.
  • Recoiled Across the Room: When releasing Sharpshooter, the recoil launches Hoodwink backwards a small distance.
  • Screwball Squirrel: She lives to mess with the people of Krimwohl, and enjoys trapping and murdering people far more than she probably should. Hoodwink fits the trope like a glove.
  • Small Girl, Big Gun: Despite being quite tiny, Hoodwink has no problem lugging around a crossbow clearly designed for someone of much larger stature; the weapon is almost bigger than she is.
  • Stepford Smiler: As Drow Ranger (with Dread Retribution equipped) notes, beneath her chipper personality is a cold-blooded, vengeful killer. After all, it takes one to know one.
    Drow Ranger: We're not so different, Hoodwink. But I don't mask my fury with a smile.

    Yurnero, the Juggernaut 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Juggernaut_8774.png
Voiced by: David Scully (original), Samoa Joe (Call of the Bladeform Legacy, Dota Underlords)

The Isle of Masks gets its name from its inhabitant's tradition of wearing masks day and night, never showing their true face - if they even have one. On this island lived Yurnero, a Juggernaut warrior who refused to obey his corrupt lord. As punishment for his insubordination, he was exiled from the island. But shortly after he was banished, a vengeful mage cast a spell which caused the Isle of Masks to sink beneath the sea, killing all those who inhabited it and leaving Yurnero as its sole survivor. The last Juggernaut now fights to preserve the legacies of his people, continuing to perfect his homeland's traditions of swordsmanship.

Juggernaut is a Carry hero who is capable of pushing the enemy ranks or charging right ahead to the enemy's formation and cause chaos from within. He is a little fragile, but if he focuses on one enemy, chances are the enemy will drop down dead, cut down by his unstoppable blade. With his first skill and signature move Blade Fury, Juggernaut spins around, gaining spell immunity for several seconds as he cuts up nearby enemies. If he stays near an enemy for the spell's entire duration, they will eat up a lot of damage. The reason he's also known as a pusher is due to his second skill, Healing Ward, which summons a ward that heals nearby allies over time, which can be extremely useful when pushing towers. A maxed Healing Ward and a sufficiently leveled Juggernaut is capable of taking down a tower single-handedly or provide excellent regeneration for the whole team in teamfights provided that the enemy does not hit the ward, as it'll go down in one hit. His third skill, Blade Dance, has a chance to turn one of his normal attacks into a critical strike to deal double damage, making him a dangerous duelist. What makes him truly a force to be reckoned with is his Ultimate, Omnislash. This ability has Juggernaut leap from target to target, attacking at a vastly increased speed for a few seconds. Creeps will also be affected, so those who face Juggernaut are encouraged to stick with their creeps when possible to minimize Omnislash's damage output, while Juggernaut himself needs to decide the right time to use his Ultimate, specifically when all enemy creeps have been taken care of.

In Dota Underlords, Juggernaut is a tier 2 hero. His ability, Blade Dance, makes him magic immune while continuously damaging nearby enemies.


  • Achilles' Heel: Juggernaut hates units that can go ethereal, since they can waste the duration of Omnislash, while opponents that can go invisible can end it prematurely. Heroes that can spam illusions can also divert Omnislash away from the main target, but then that's what Battle Fury is for.
  • Adaptation Species Change: Was an orc in DotA. Unlike Disruptor and Warlock, he wasn't made into an Oglodi, and his race is unspecified.
  • Anti-Magic: Juggernaut gains debuff immunity and 80% magic resistance when using Blade Fury.
    Juggernaut: Can't touch me."
  • Awesome, but Impractical: 6.83 Blade Fury is best described as a one-point wonder: you put a value point in it, then you skip it until level 23. While the level 1 nuke damage and the spell immunity are certainly useful, it also prevents Juggernaut's right-clicks (which is his main source of damage) from hurting anything but buildings, and from as early as level 3 onwards Blade Dance crits have the potential to out-DPS Blade Fury with ease. As a result, after level 1 Juggernaut players usually only use Blade Fury to be able to safely TP out without having to blow a BKB charge, for which a value point is enough. The spell has been significantly buffed since then a max Blade Fury build have been the go-to build.
  • Battle Cry: Activating Blade Fury will make him yell "JUGGERNAUUUUUTTT!!!"
  • Boring, but Practical: The standard Mask of Madness Juggernaut build runs on this. Get only 1 point in Blade Fury until level 15, max Blade Dance before skilling Healing Ward, and get Omnislash at every opportunity possible; while getting Mask of Madness as a first item and skip Aghanim's Scepter (a core item for other builds) entirely. The result is a carry who can do little other than right-clicking... but also has an extreme farm rate and sustainability, with a noticeable lack of dependence on his ultimate.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: While he does know some magic as indicated by the lore of Healing Ward, his ability to become untouchable in Blade Fury and Omnislash are implied to be him training to be just that good with a sword.
    Flavor Text for Omnislash: The fruits of discipline; with practice comes strength.
  • Combat Medic: Juggernaut's Healing Ward gives a significant boost to nearby allies' health regeneration. The rest of his kit is all about cleaving enemies to bits.
  • Cool Mask: He's from the 'Isle of Masks', of course he comes with one. And a lot of them, depending on the accessory he's wearing. He makes it clear that he wears masks like that so no one can see his face, for whatever reason. Amusingly, one of his primary builds involves ... the Mask of Madness.
  • Critical Hit: Blade Dance, which gives Juggernaut a chance to deal bonus with his right-clicks. Its damage multiplier is one of the lowest in the game, but it compensates with a very high proc chance.
  • Deadpan Snarker: He's already plenty snarky towards his enemies by default, but the Call of the Bladeform Legacy voice pack takes this to a whole new level.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Blade Fury can rack up a ton of damage over time in the early game, Omnislash lets Juggernaut repeatedly strike enemies while giving them no chance to retaliate, Blade Dance has a high crit chance, and he has a faster-than-average base attack time to begin with. Unlike other crit heroes like Phantom Assassin and Wraith King, Juggernaut won't delete enemies in one hit, but he can still cut them to bits rather quickly with a flurry of small crits and Blade Fury slashes.
  • Disc-One Nuke: Blade Fury is able to deal 400 magical damage from level 1 and gives him debuff immunity (so the enemy can't just stun him and run away), but since Juggernaut needs to stick to the target for a whole 5 seconds he usually needs the help of another hero if the enemy is not careless.
  • Don't Explain the Joke: Commits one when he tried a pun while bottling a Rune:
    Juggernaut: Does it matter if I put this in my jug or not? Get it? 'Jug or not'?note ''
  • Dual Wielding: Not exactly his style, but one of his rare quotes pokes about an over the top version of this:
  • The Faceless: Nobody has ever seen him without his mask. People aren't even sure he has a face under the mask.
  • Flash Step: His ultimate, Omnislash, has him constantly jump to random nearby enemies while rapidly attacking them.
  • Glowing Eyes: His only facial feature visible. Although given that some masks change the appearance of his eyes, they may simply be lenses on the mask.
  • Golden Super Mode: Turns glowing gold while in the middle of Omnislash.
  • Invulnerable Attack: Juggernaut is invulnerable when casting Swiftslash and Omnislash.
  • Jack of All Stats: Juggernaut's kit contains a heal, a crit, built-in debuff immunity, and two nukes, making him a very well-rounded, easy-to-use hero.
  • The Juggernaut: Squishier than most examples, but he can happily throw off your magic by just spinning; Healing Ward, if left be and leveled up, can let him recover damage enough to solo a tower; and if you meet him alone without protection, he'll stomp you dead with Omnislash. Once he's farmed, Omnislash has the potential to cleave through entire teams, giving them no chance to retaliate.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: As per his Rōnin imagery, Juggernaut's default weapon is a katana.
  • Last of His Kind: After his homeland sank into the sea, Yurnero was left as the last person who knows the traditions of the Isle of Masks.
  • Lifesaving Misfortune: The exile imposed upon him spared him from the watery grave the rest of his kind ended up in.
  • Many Spirits Inside of One: The Bladeform Legacy Arcana item has the souls of the Isle of Masks using Yurnero as a vessel.
  • Master Swordsman: Juggernaut makes an emphasis of this, favoring precision and style towards pure brute strength.
  • Meta Guy: Not by default, but his alternate voice lines with his Arcana reference out of games events, like the famous match with Navi at The International 2012 and the reversal of fortunes known simply as "The Play"; Juggernaut has special lines recognizing this for the other heroes who were on Navi's team in that match (with the exception of Rubick).
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Zig-zagged in his lore. For trying to oppose a corrupt lord, Yurnero is banished from the Isle of Masks... just in time for the whole isle to sink and saving his life.
  • Noodle Incident: In the past, Juggernaut and Templar Assassin used to be close companions and maybe lovers, but something unknown happened and they went separate paths with their bonds implied to be broken. Juggernaut's mask being broken, as depicted by the Bladeform Legacy item, was the result of an unknown encounter with Sven.
  • The Noseless: Juggernaut's mask has no visible nose, and he counts as a noseless hero for the purpose of Cavern Crawl.
  • Not Afraid to Die: Played with in one of his rare quotes, probably because dying is not that beneficial in the long run.
  • Obvious Rule Patch: Patch 7.21 changed Omnislash to root Juggernaut for its duration. This change doesn't affect the spell's behavior in any way, and its sole purpose is to prevent him from using Blink Dagger while Omnislashing and carving up multiple groups of enemies.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: The Healing Ward only has 1 HP, so Juggernaut must be careful to place it so it won't get 1-shotted by an enemy hero. Its small size slightly compensates for this, making it rather hard to target, especially in a big fight with lots of creeps around.
  • Random Number God: Swiftslash and Omnislash choose random targets around Juggernaut, so they're very deadly in 1v1 fights but lose a lot of effectiveness when even a single creep gets nearby as it can cause him to jump away from his intended target.
  • Reverse Grip: His default stance is this, but he switches to forward grip when fighting, or when there's an enemy hero nearby.
  • Samurai: For some reason, Juggernaut evokes the image of a lone, wandering samurai with emphasis of blade mastery and sense of honor.
    • In Warcraft 3 DotA, he was a blademaster of the Burning Blade clan, who were heavily inspired by samurai, and his design has remained practically unchanged.
  • Screaming Warrior: With the Bladeform Legacy Arcana. When casting Blade Fury, Juggernaut throws stoicism to the wind and roars at the top of his voice as he charges the enemy, blade whirling, and with the Arcana he lets out another yell each time he kills an enemy, so if he's doing well, expect him to get pretty loud.
  • Sealed Badass in a Can: The ancestral spirits inside his mask. The Bladeform Legacy Arcana depicts Juggernaut being possessed by these spirits after they are released.
  • Shoot the Medic First: Healing Wards are a One-Hit-Point Wonder, but they are among the most powerful heals in the game if left alive.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Eventually unused, but there's another quote for that group:
    • To Final Fantasy VII with his Limit Break, Omnislash.
    • Juggernaut has a few Shout-Out directed to his successor from Heroes of Newerth, Swiftblade:
      • Considering his original model was a maskless red orc, Juggernaut's new iconic masked head is a response to Swiftblade's face-covering helmet.
      • On denying, he might say "My blade is swifter!"
      • His new ability from an Aghanim Scepter upgrade is named 'Swiftslash', after Swiftblade's Ultimate "Swift Slashes".
  • So Long, Suckers!: He has unique lines when he uses Blade Fury and the TP Scroll at the same time, a common practice since the debuff immunity from Blade Fury prevents most abilities from interrupting the Scroll's channeling.
    Juggernaut: "I'm outta here."
  • Sophisticated as Hell: An honorable swordsman who still isn't above calling the opponent a "loser". And that's just the start.
  • Soul Jar: His mask is revealed to be one with the Bladeform Legacy equipped; said item has his mask cleaved open, releasing the spirits inside, which take the form of a dragon spirit.
  • Spell My Name With An S: A minor version. Whenever he uses Blade Fury, he could instead yell "Battle Fury!", which is in fact a buyable item. Even Juggernaut could spell it right when he wanted when he bought the item.
  • Spectacular Spinning: Blade Fury, the progenitor of the Spin2Win meme (but not the overall trope). In Juggernaut's case, while its damage doesn't scale too well, it has the bonus of giving him debuff immunity while still being able to use items like the Town Portal Scroll.
  • Spin Attack: When using Blade Fury, Juggernaut spins with his sword held out, damaging foes around him.
  • Spin to Deflect Stuff: Blade Fury at least deflects magic while Juggernaut is spinning.
  • The Stoic: Yurnero keeps his feelings to himself and remains quiet and brooding. Most of the time.
  • Surprisingly Sudden Death: The infamous Blink Dagger + Abyssal Blade + Manta Style build. Blink in on lone enemy, stun him with Overwhelm, activate Manta Style, and watch as he melts in 2 second duration of stun (even better if you Shift queue those sequence). Or just use Omnislash on a single hero.
  • Symbiotic Possession: With the Bladeform Legacy equipped, Yurnero becomes possessed by the ancestral spirits of the Isle of Masks. The Call of the Bladeform Legacy voice pack has them speaking through Yurnero.
  • Technicolor Blade: An orange one, by default. Cosmetic items add colors like green, pink, black, and red.
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: By default, Juggernaut covers his torso with nothing but a furred mantle, which leaves most of his chest exposed. He does have a few tops among his cosmetic items, but most of them don't cover him up that much.

    Luna, the Moon Rider 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Luna_dota_2_8879.png
Voiced by: Linda K. Morris

Once the Scourge of the Plains, the fearsome leader of a mighty army, Luna was forced to flee her homelands when her men were vanquished, leaving her with nothing. Now, she had not eaten properly in days, struggling to survive in the wilderness for the past several months. On a moonlit night at the edge of a forest, she saw the shadow of a strange beast, and in desperation, she chased it wildly. Every time Luna thought she had caught the beast, it escaped deeper into the woods, but she did not give up until she found her target, a feline creature, sitting atop a hill. As the beast charged her, Luna was certain this was the end for her, but instead of mauling her, it disarmed her and ran away as hooded figures surrounded her. Luna learned that she had been chosen and tested by the moon goddess Selemene, and was asked to either pledge allegiance to Selemene as one of her Dark Moon warriors, or leave the Nightsilver Woods and return to her life of scavenging. Luna accepted invitation into the Dark Moon without hesitation and took upon the title of the Moon Rider, guardian of the Nightsilver Woods.

Luna is a late-game carry with the ability to rapidly tear down several targets. Her first spell, Lucent Beam, summons a piercing ray of moonlight which damages and mini-stuns its target from a good range. Her second ability, Moon Glaive, is what makes her into a fearsome carry: with this passive, her projectiles will bounce from target to target, allowing her to hit multiple enemies with a single attack, albeit with reduced damage for the secondary targets. Her third ability is another passive, Lunar Blessing, is an aura which increases the primary attribute of nearby allies, and improves Luna's vision range at night. Finally, her powerful ultimate ability is Eclipse: this teamfight-oriented spell causes Luna to rapidly and repeatedly cast Lucent Beam on randomly selected nearby targets, dealing large amounts of magical damage to many foes. Those who dare trespass on Luna's domain should beware, or they will find themselves at the mercy of her powerful attacks and spells.

In Artifact, Luna is a blue hero with the Reactive Ability Lucent Beam. This ability deals 1 piercing damage to a random enemy, and grants one charge to each copy of her signature card, Eclipse, in the deck. Eclipse is a spell which deals 3 piercing damage to a random enemy; this effect is repeated for each charge the spell has.

In Dota Underlords, Luna is a tier 2 hero. Her ability, Moon Glaives, passively causes her attacks to bounce to nearby foes, dealing reduced damage with each bounce.


  • Adaptation Species Change: A Night Elf in DotA, though she retains most of the characteristics.
  • Ax-Crazy: Fits to a T: her glaives are best suited to mass slaughter, she reacts to most everything by trying to kill it, and even has a bit of a sadistic streak.
  • Beam Spam: Eclipse saturates the area around Luna with multiple Lucent Beams in succession (upon her release in the original mod, all Eclipse beams would strike simultaneously, which was soon changed for being literally unavoidable instant death most of the time).
  • Blood Knight: Bloodseeker says she has a "reputation for bloodlust". Toned down, but she stills shows signs of it:
  • Bolt of Divine Retribution: Lucent Beam is described as an equivalent of this from moon goddess Selemene, striking a foe with a ray of lunar energy.
  • Cleavage Window: With the Rider's Eclipse set. The Rider's Eclipse Pauldrons is one of the most sought-out items on the community market for a reason.
  • Field Power Effect: Lunar Blessing boosts the attack and armor of allies around Luna.
  • Fragile Speedster: She has the second highest base movement speed in the game, but her Strength stat is abysmal and needs to be counteracted with durability items like Black King Bar and Satanic.
  • Heel–Face Turn: From Scourge of the Plains to guardian of the Nightsilver Woods, yet she's still an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight.
  • Herd-Hitting Attack: Moon Glaive allows Luna's glaive to bounce to enemy units near the attacked unit.
  • Innate Night Vision: Levelling Lunar Blessing increases Luna's night vision to 1800, equal to the standard day vision.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Luna is one of the least-friendly heroes in the game, but she does have some regard for certain individuals like Zeus, Rylai, Lina, Shendelzare and Mirana, and bestows moon's blessing upon those who help her (using Healing Salve, Spirit Vessel to heal an allied hero, Clarity to restore allied hero's mana, casting Moon Shard on an allied hero, or giving Aghanim's Scepter upgrade as Alchemist will trigger hero's thanks responses).
    Luna (thanking an ally): Moon's blessings.
    Luna (meeting Lina as an ally): Light the way, Lina.
    Luna (meeting Vengeful Spirit as an ally): You will have your vengeance, Spirit.
    Luna (meeting Rylai as an ally): Bring them winter, Crystal Maiden.
    Luna (meeting Zeus as an ally): Ah, Zeus! The heavens are with us.
    Luna (meeting Mirana as an ally): By your leave, Princess Mirana.
  • Kill Sat: Lucent Beam and Eclipse summon damaging beams of light from the sky, although they have a divine origin.
  • Lunacy: Her powers come from the Moon Goddess Selemene. She can strike foes with damaging moonlight using Lucent Beam and Eclipse, and boost her stats and her allies' with Lunar Blessing.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Her curves, bright skin-tight clothing, and... posture surely attract the viewers' attention.
  • Non-Indicative Name: Luna's glaive doesn't look like what it's insisted to be. Then again, neither does Warcraft III's iteration of her, as her model was based on the Night Elf Huntress unit who throws three-blade weapons called moonglaives.
  • Panthera Awesome: Her default mount, Nova, a sabre-toothed cat.
  • Pinball Projectile: Moon Glaives allows her autoattacks to bounce to up to six additional targets, though they lose damage with each bounce. They can also bounce between enemies that they've already hit, drastically increasing her damage against small groups.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Mirana's blue. Whereas Mirana is more dignified and classy, many of Luna's quotes portray her as violent and bloodthirsty.
  • The Resenter: Luna does not like that Mirana is of a higher class in service of Selemene. As an ally, she shows respect to Mirana in as much as she can feign by the laws of Selemene, but as an enemy, if Luna kills Mirana, she will remark about succeeding Mirana's spot. The reasoning is that Luna probably saw Mirana as a pampered, stuck-up bitch who got everything handed to her without actually trying, whereas she had to earn her peers as a warrior through tons of bloodbath.
  • Spam Attack: Eclipse aside, her playstyle favors spewing out masses of almost anything she has thanks to their low cooldown. Even Eclipse can be seen as a burst of Lucent Beam spam.
    • Magical Luna build. Take the cooldown reduction of Lucent Beam, then buy Octarine Core for a 1.5 second cooldown on Lucent Beam. Optimal? Probably not. Fun? Definitely.
  • Spy Catsuit: Luna wears a sleek, form-fitting catsuit that could be easily mistaken for a Latex Space Suit if it wasn't a fantasy world.
  • Stellar Name: Luna is a fitting name for someone who wields the power of the moon.
  • Summon Magic: Eclipse:
    In times of great need, Selemene herself descends into the world, blocking out the light and hope of the opposed.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: If it wasn't for the laws decreed by Selemene, Luna would be more than glad to rip Mirana a new one and then take over the throne of being Selemene's top servant.
  • Total Eclipse of the Plot: Eclipse temporarily turns day into night for a few seconds.
  • Violent Glaswegian: Has the voice and the temperament to be one.

    Medusa, the Gorgon 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/medusa_full_1519.png
Voiced by: Jen Taylor

Of the three daughters of a sea goddess, Medusa was the most beautiful, as well as the only one to be mortal. She took comfort in the thought that her power was in her beauty, until the day she and her sisters were assailed in their home. While the mysterious attackers grabbed her sisters, they refused to take Medusa with them, sensing her mortality, which they found repulsive. Humiliated and devastated, Medusa went to the temple of her divine mother and begged for her beauty to be exchanged for power with which to rescue her sisters. Her wish was granted in the form of a terrifying transformation, and Medusa now understands that there is no power in being beautiful, for beauty comes from power.

Medusa the Gorgon is a ranged agility Hero. Highly item-dependent, she acts as a carry who can potentially strike down entire teams at once while protected by tank-like survivability. While she has zero Strength, Medusa is protected by a permanent Mana Shield which provides insane levels of durability by causing 98% of all damage Medusa would take to be taken out of her mana pool rather than her health pool as long as she has mana to spare, making killing a sufficiently-outfitted Medusa a tricky and time-consuming process; this ability is innate to Medusa and available right from the start, but can be leveled up like other abilities to increase the amount of damage absorbed per mana point and Medusa's mana pool. To fight back against enemies, she can use Split Shot to make each of her attacks to hit multiple targets for reduced damage, greatly increasing the potency of damage-granting items by spreading her damage among many foes. Her second skill and sole nuke, Mystic Snake, launches a magical snake that bounces between enemies and damages them before returning to Medusa, with the damage increasing with each bounce. Upon returning to Medusa, the snake restores her mana based on the max mana of the targets hit. As fitting someone who calls herself a gorgon, Medusa's ultimate is called Stone Gaze. Using it causes Medusa to temporarily unleash her full power, massively slowing any units that are looking in her direction. After 2 seconds of exposure, the affected enemy is turned to stone (or, if it's an illusion, instantly killed), rendering them unable to act. While petrified, units take bonus physical damage. All of this combines to make Medusa one of if not the most durable hero in the entire game, capable of ripping entire teams to shreds while they feebly try to kill her.

In Dota Underlords, Medusa is the Ace of Hunters, granting Hunters bonus damage when they are attacking the same target. She has two abilities. The first is Stone Gaze, which causes Medusa to slow enemies who look at her; foes who look at her for 2 seconds while the ability is active are petrified, stunning them and increasing the damage they take. The second is Split Shot, a passive ability which fires two secondary arrows at enemies near her target, dealing reduced damage to them.


  • Achilles' Heel:
    • Mana Drain abilities tears through her shield rapidly, seriously dropping her durability, and manfighting-oriented carries, or just basically any melee carry with a Skull Basher and comparable farm can lock her down and tear her apart as she's as vulnerable to being bashlocked as any other immobile hero. She gets a few pot shots during Stone Gaze while they look away, and if she doesn't kill them with that, it's over for her.
    • A common joke about Medusa is how unskilled players go the entire game getting killed by Axe starting from when he hits level 6, since with zero Strength, Medusa will always be within the kill threshold of Culling Blade if she doesn't wise up and build health-boosting items.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: Unlike other heroes, Medusa's mana bar is permanently visible under her health bar to all players without needing to select her and then read it from the HUD, because Mana Shield effectively forms the majority of her health total.
  • Armored But Frail: Medusa has zero starting Strength and Strength growth, meaning she's stuck with a relatively small health pool... if it weren't for Mana Shield, which redirects 98% of all damage she takes to her mana pool. Assuming she has enough mana to fuel it, Mana Shield effectively gives Medusa a potential 6000+ health.
  • Counter-Attack: Cold Blooded (a passive ability unlocked by Aghanim's Shard) sends a single-target Mystic Snake at an enemy that casts a targeted spell at Medusa.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Medusa is pretty much the stereotype of an ultra-hard carry: she's completely useless before 45 minutes (even slower than other hard carries like Spectre, Anti-Mage or Terrorblade), she's unstoppable after 50 mins, and until then she can't do anything but farm. If the enemy team has a Medusa you're basically playing 5 vs 4 for 40 minutes. That's why many, many players say that she is just unplayable: useless without 25k+ money and garbage space-taking mid game.
  • Damage-Increasing Debuff: Stone Gaze, in addition to completely disabling its victims, also makes them more vulnerable to physical damage. On top of that, it also causes Mystic Snake to deal pure damage instead of magical damage.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Mystic Snake only does 200 damage at max stacks. However, it adds 70 damage to every bounce, ending at 550 damage on the final target (690 if she gets the talent to add 2 bounces). Mystic Snake doesn't travel all that fast, so a lot of enemy heroes can move away from it before it reaches them, but if she does score a high-end hit, it's one of the most powerful non-ultimate nukes in the game.
  • Gorgeous Gorgon: Double subverted. Although she is described as possessing "legendary beauty" before her transformation she finds her current form and power to be truly beautiful.
  • Magikarp Power: One of the most famous examples of this, even among other hard carries. With good farm, teamfighting against her is essentially impossible. On the other hand her mid-game is complete garbage, because she has no disable, she can't gank and snowball, and she needs minimum 3 lategame items to avoid feeding in teamfights. The only thing she can do in the mid game is farm, farm, and farm again, but when she comes online she is completely unstoppable, having almost double the effective HP compared to other hard carries due to Mana Shield, and able to 1v5 entire teams with Stone Gaze and Split Shot.
  • Mana Shield: Her third skill, named this, reduces any damage that she takes by 98%, and deals that damage to her mana pool instead. It gets more efficient as it's leveled up, blocking more damage per point of mana spent. Given her almost complete lack of actual HP, Medusa's mana effectively serves as her health bar.
  • Medusa: Obviously.
  • Mighty Glacier: By the time Medusa gets her Linken's Sphere and choice of durability and damage items, she can deal quite a punch and take one as well with Mana Shield. Just don't expect her to move quickly without the help of items or buffs, though. This is partly why Eye of Skadi, with its slowing effect, is so popular on her (the main reason is the huge stat boost the item gives her).
  • Multishot: Split Shot splits her arrows to hit up to 4 additional targets.
  • Non-Standard Skill Learning: While normal abilities start a game unlearnt and can be upgraded up to level 4, Medusa starts with one level of Mana Shield, which can be upgraded up to level 5.
  • Pinball Projectile: Mystic Snake jumps from target to target before returning to Medusa.
  • Power Crystal: Embedded in her forehead.
  • Power Echoes: Her voice.
  • Power Glows: Stone Gaze is accompanied by her Power Crystal and eyes emitting a bright red light.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning
  • Required Secondary Powers: Because Medusa is built around using Mana Shield to soak damage, she starts with a level of it already learned and it comes with 5 levels as opposed to the usual 4, as without it she's just a slight step up from being a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
  • The Rival: To Naga Siren with similarities in character design, and in their abilities effectively cancelling out each other.
  • Snake People: Humanoid upper body, serpentine lower body.
  • Sssssnake Talk: As a half-snake Gorgon, Medusa likes to stretch out her "S" sounds.
  • Stone Wall: For a hero with zero Strength, Medusa is extremely tanky even from the get-go thanks to Mana Shield giving her a lot more effective health than she appears to have, and when she's even halfway farmed it's not uncommon to see people attempt to manfight her and then flail away at her uselessly for about thirty seconds. On the other hand, she deals low single-target damage and has no mobility to speak of, so she needs items to start bringing the hurt in late-game fights.
  • Taken for Granite: Her ultimate, Stone Gaze, will slow all enemies that look at her, and if they look too long will turn to stone, taking bonus physical damage (which makes them easy prey for her Split Shot). Mystic Snake, when upgraded with Aghanim's Scepter, will also petrify any target it hits.
  • Youngest Child Wins: She was the most beautiful of the three sisters, and her "flaw" made the assailants leave her free.

    Meepo, the Geomancer 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Meepo_9214.png
Voiced by: Nolan North

Meepo is a scavenger living in the Riftshadow Ruins. He mostly subsists on small captured creatures, but occasionally plans trips to the remains of an ancient palace where he can collect ancient artifacts to sell in a nearby town. In this palace, dark rituals were once held where the souls of victims were imprisoned in ceremonial crystals that were then shattered into pieces. Although these Riftshadow crystals are dangerous to handle, they are also exceptionally valuable, so Meepo is always happy to find one. On one unfortunate occasion however, a Riftshadow crystal he discovered accidentally went off on him... Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Sometimes, one hero just can't get enough done by themselves. Fortunately, Meepo the Geomancer doesn't have that problem; thanks to his Divided We Stand ultimate ability, there's plenty of Meepo to go around. Each level in Divided We Stand creates a clone of Meepo with its own pair of boots that can use all of Meepo's abilities, with an additional one if he has Aghanim's Scepter, for up to five times the Meepo with only one string attached: if one Meepo dies, all of them bite the dust. As such, masterful multi-unit micromanagement and multitasking are musts for mastering Meepo. His other abilities all benefit from the power of numbers granted by the clones. Earthbind throws a net that traps all units caught inside, and its low cooldown means that Meepo can pin down an enemy indefinitely with the help of his clones. Poof allows Meepo to teleport, dealing damage both in the area where he leaves and the area he arrives at, but can only be used to teleport to Meepo. Which, of course, makes it quite fortunate that there are so many of Meepo, as this lets each Meepo escape from danger by Poofing to a Meepo that's sitting somewhere safe, deal heavy area-of-effect damage, or converge on a single target with the other Meepos and start beating it down. Speaking of which, his Ransack ability lets Meepo's attacks steal a fixed amount of health from the target, which heals all other Meepo clones for the same amount. With Meepo, more really is merrier.

In Artifact, Meepo is a blue hero. His signature card, Divided We Stand, is a spell which summons a Meepo. Meepo has Poof, an Active Ability which sends Meepo to the same lane as another Meepo, then deals 2 damage to his neighbors. However, he also has the United We Fall Continuous Effect, which kills every allied Meepo on the board when one of them dies.


  • Angrish
    Meepo (angry): "Ahhygwatagtbekddinme."
  • Anti-Escape Mechanism: Trying to run from a pack of Meepos tends to be rather difficult. As soon as one Meepo lands an Earthbind, the others can follow up with their own Earthbinds to pin the target down even longer.
  • The Artifact: His Scepter upgrade no longer gives him a new Meepo to control (it's instead given by a level 25 talent now), but keeps some quotes from when it's still the case.
    Meepo : "Ah, Scept- wait, where did you come from?"
  • Artifact Title: In the original Defense of the Ancients, Meepo used the model of the Kobold Geomancer unit, hence his title, and Earthbind was stated to be earth magic used to snare the victims. His old passive ability was also called Geostrike and involved enchanting his weapon with earth magic. In his current skillset and lore, he's just a scavenger that seemingly was split into multiple by a fracturing Riftshadow Crystal, with no indication that he knows anything that could be considered "geomancy".
  • Awesome, but Impractical: While it is possible to learn how to play Meepo well, his skill floor is so high that he results in this for most players, even professional ones (he is the perennial exception to the unwritten rule that a pro must be able to play all heroes in his position at an acceptable level). With the addition of area-of-effect disables being his hardest counter, Meepo remains in competitive play forever as a super situational hero even for the few carry players with exceptionally strong micro, because other heroes such as Arc Warden and Terrorblade fulfil a similar role without having all of Meepo's downsides, and in competitive games he's only ever seen as a very rare surprise last pick when the enemy captain failed to take into account these players' capability to play Meepo.
  • Beware the Silly Ones
  • Carry a Big Stick: One of Meepo's cosmetic weapons, the Crystal Scavenger's Augmented Mace.
  • Clone Degeneration: Meepo's clones cannot use any items and runes except for the boots that Meepo wears. Also, each clone gets a consecutively higher voice.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Individually Meepo doesn't do very much damage, but four or five of them wailing on the same hero can deal absurd amounts of damage.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Widely considered the hardest character in the entire game to master, even moreso than Invoker. The micromanagement aspect alone is difficult, but letting any one Meepo clone die will cause all of them to die, making it easy for new players to feed the enemy team simply because they accidentally left one of their clones behind. However, mastering the micromanagement aspect lets you snowball past every other player in the game and carry the match.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: His "Geomancer" title implies he has some kind of earth magic, though he doesn't show much of it aside from maybe being able to instantly teleport to his clones through the earth.
  • Doppelgänger Attack: His entire gimmick.
  • Dynamic Entry: The result when multiple Meepos Poof to one in a battle. Good Meepo players can often jump on top of enemy heroes with almost no warning, trapping them with Earthbind, followed by three or four others Poofing in immediately after.
  • Elite Army: Unlike illusion heroes such as Phantom Lancer or Naga Siren who depend on Zerg Rush tactics using significantly weaker but expendable illusions to mass on a target, Meepo's clones deal regular damage, can all cast full-power abilities on separate cooldowns, and take normal damage from enemies. The flip side, of course, is that each clone is invaluable since the loss of one means the loss of all of them.
  • Exponential Potential: It is possible to gain experience with every clone, meaning that you can put a clone in multiple lanes and the jungle, and gain experience as if you're in all of those places at the same time. A successful player who can farm and keep all his clones within experience range throughout a match often hits level cap (25) before others are even able to max out their ultimates (16), meaning that each clone can possibly be stronger than the individual heroes on the enemy team.
  • Fighting Clown
  • Fusion Dance: MegaMeepo causes the main Meepo to mount all other Meepos around him on top of his shoulders. While in this form, he gains 50% of the other Meepos' stats, Earthbind generates additional nets and Poof deals more damage based on the amount of Meepos riding on top.
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: After activating MegaMeepo, the topmost Meepo can be flung at an enemy to deal damage and slow them.
  • Has a Type: Redheads; he says as much if he has to kill Lina, Windranger, or Enchantress, and his announcer pack has him sounding quite pleased if the player picks one of them.
  • Heal Thyself: Using Dig heals Meepo by 35% of his maximum HP over 3 seconds.
  • Honest John's Dealership: He's such a trader himself, stealing items from defeated enemies, and (correctly!) accuses the Shopkeeper of this.
  • Inescapable Net: Meepo's first ability, Earthbind, prevents trapped players from going invisible or blinking away for the duration of the disable, and unlike other nets can affect enemies in an area (as opposed to only a single target). While it only lasts two seconds, the cooldown is only eight at max level, so with four or more Meepos and good timing it is actually possible to keep a group of enemies rooted to the ground indefinitely.
  • The Juggernaut: Thanks to having multiple copies of himself and a cheap channeling spell interrupt, Meepo does not care about single-target disables, binding nets, and channeling disables, and will continue bashing and exploding his enemies to death. A Meepo can easily end up with preposterous amounts of HP and damage on all clones by buying relatively cheap stat items, which can be benefited by clones. A buff to his magic resistance in the 6.78 patch gave him 35% innate magic resistance, so he often simply shrugs off magic nukes, as do his clones.
  • Kryptonite Is Everywhere: Meepo is vulnerable to both area of effect disables and single target pick-off abilities, which are not uncommon at the very least. First-picking Meepo in a Captains Mode game is akin to throwing the game, as it will give the enemy captain too many options to counter your mid hero.
  • Leaning Tower of Mooks: MegaMeepo is effectively this, causing every nearby Meepo to stack up on top of the main one to become a single hero with increased stats and a stronger Earthbind and Poof.
  • Life Drain: Ransack steals a small amount of life from the target with each attack, healing all of Meepo's clones for that amount. Though the effect is small on its own, five Meepos hitting you at the same time means taking up to 100 extra damage while each of them are healed for 100 health.
  • Magikarp Power: Early on, Meepo can't really do anything. Once he gets a clone, he gets better, but not by much. But with four clones and a metric ton of farm, Meepo can bulldoze towers and enemy teams like nobody's business.
  • The Napoleon
  • Non-Standard Skill Learning: Divided We Stand, unlike other ultimates, can be levelled up at level 4/11/18 instead of 6/12/18.
  • Not the Intended Use: Dragon Lance is an item generally purchased for the increased attack range on ranged heroes, so you'll pretty much never see it on a melee hero. Meepo is the one exception, since it gives decent stats at a reasonable price for both him and his clones.
  • Only in It for the Money: Judging from his voice responses, he's only in it for whatever money he thinks he's going to get after it's over. (Winning: I'm gonna be rich! Rich!")
  • Plucky Comic Relief
  • Power Crystal: The Riftshadow crystals mentioned in Meepo's lore.
  • Scavenger World: He originates from such an area.
  • Self-Duplication: Meepo's ultimate, Divided We Stand, creates a clone of himself that functions identically to Meepo prime (meaning that unlike illusions, they take and deal normal damage, and stay on the map indefinitely). He can create up to three clones (four with the level 25 talent), for a total of four(five) Meepos.
  • Shout-Out: He is named after an NPC in the Dungeons & Dragons module The Sunless Citadel, and shares some voice lines with the Scout from Team Fortress 2.
    Meepo: (upon death) "He punched out all my blood."
  • Shovel Strike: His weapon of choice is a shovel enchanted with his passive, Ransack.
  • Skill Gate Characters: A variant of this: Meepo is viable even in the highest pub games but is a rare sight in pro games. While in pub games and in the hands of a good player Meepo can be unstoppable, he is a rare sight in pro games because of how many counters he has, which even the highest level pubs don't bother with. Meepo is only viable as a pocket strat or surprise last pick when your opponent doesn't expect it, and only in the hands of people who can play him.
  • Some Dexterity Required: Controlling a single Meepo is relatively straightforward and about as easy to manage as Wraith King. Commanding four or five in battle, queuing up their Poof and Earthbind together, getting them to position around and attack the correct target with Ransacks, all while the enemy is actively trying to kill you by focusing down one of your clones, not so easy.
  • Spam Attack: Each Meepo clone has its own independent cooldowns, which allows him to cast his spells up to five times in a row when he has enough clones in the same place. On top of that, his active spells each have rather short cooldowns when levelled up, further facilitating spam: Earthbind at max level has short enough cooldown that if all the Meepo clones keep casting it one after the other on the same target, they can keep someone locked down until they run out of mana or their target dies.
  • Splash Damage Abuse: There are several ways to improve the usefulness of Poof:
    • Poof can be used on a moving Meepo, so if one clone is simply following a hostile, that enemy won't be able to dodge the area damage.
    • Damage is dealt on both teleport entry and exit, and Meepo can teleport to himself. This is an easy way of dealing double damage if the target can't move away.
  • Teleport Spam: His second ability Poof has a very short cooldown, and is often spammed during combat, or just to get around the map faster. Buying Boots of Travel on a Meepo can give him a global presence, since every clone has a separate cooldown, and the others just need to Poof to this location without using their boots. For a farmed Meepo this means 5 global teleports every minute - more than Tinker and Nature's Prophet can pull off.
  • Weaksauce Weakness:
    • Unlike most heroes that rely on weight of numbers, Meepo is vulnerable to both area of effect disables and single target pick-off abilities, as the opponent only has to kill one Meepo to bring them all down, not necessarily Meepo prime. This also means he gets very little mileage out of Black King Bar and Linken's Sphere as they don't protect his clones.
    • Earthshaker hits him particularly hard, as with the help of the four clones his ultimate Echo Slam can easily score a Rampage.
    • Getting stunned and then plowed through by Sven, who has both Storm Hammer to stun, and Great Cleave and God's Strength to kill the clumped-up Meepos. With most other heroes attempting something similar, if you survive, you can hope to lock them down and run the damaged Meepo away, with Sven, all the clones are brutalized.
    • Ember Spirit's Sleight of Fist with a Battle Fury hits a clump of Meepos just as hard as a badly-positioned team of other heroes.
    • Dragon Knight's ability to cripple all of their base damage, durability, and group slow grinds Meepo down and cuts down his low mobility.
    • Chaos Knight can simply abuse his incredible damage output and Reality Rift to give Meepo a taste of his own medicine, surrounding one Meepo and utterly annihilating it.
    • Lich’s Chain Frost is a nightmare to a clumped group of Meepos, especially when talented to bounce indefinitely until there are no targets in range.
    • Getting stunned and then plowed through by Magnus and his team, who will happily abuse the free cleaves Magnus hands out to wipe the floor with Meepo... especially after Magnus forces them (and a good few of Meepo's buddies) into a nice, tight formation.
  • Weaponized Teleportation: Poof does area of effect damage at the origin and destination, so using Poof in place inflicts a large amount of damage; however, it's still very damaging even with just the destination Poof. Combine it with several Meepos at max level, and you can literally cut most heroes down to size in less than five seconds by yourself.
  • Whatevermancy: This is largely a holdover from the original DotA, where he was referred to as a Geomancer. When his backstory was rewritten, it became The Artifact. There actually is such a thing as geomancy; unfortunately its focus is less "creating teleporting clones, presumably from the very earth" and more "divination via patterns in sand".
  • You Dirty Rat!: While no longer explicitly a kobold, Meepo still has very rat-like features.

    Sun Wukong, the Monkey King 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dota_monkey_king.png
Voiced by: Bill Millsap (Dota 2), Matthew Mercer (trailer)

Sun Wukong was a simian warrior who once dared to rebel against the gods themselves. As punishment, he was trapped beneath a mountain, and for 500 years, he waited in solitude until the gods offered him a shot at redemption: serve and protect an acolyte on his pilgrimage to obtain an ancient relic, and he would be freed. Sun Wukong accepted, and after overcoming countless obstacles, his journey of atonement was completed. But even after all these hardships, the Monkey King, in his endless thirst for adventure and glory, simply can't resist the temptation of defying the gods...

Dota 2's first exclusive hero, the Monkey King needs no introduction. Tricky, agile and monkey-ish as one would expect, Sun Wukong is an ambush oriented fighter who shines when he takes advantage of surprise to strike at his enemy as hard as possible. Boundless Strike has Monkey King slamming the Ruyi Jingu Bang on the ground hitting multiple enemies with a narrow area-of-effect, stunning and dealing critical damage to them. Tree Dance lets Monkey King leap to a tree of his choice, with the catch that taking damage will put Tree Dance on cooldown when he's on the ground, and he will suffer a lengthy stun if a tree he's standing on is destroyed. Primal Spring, available while balancing on a tree, will have him spring from a tree, dealing magical damage and slowing enemies within the area-of-effect. Jingu Mastery grants Monkey King bonus damage if he hits a single enemy hero four times, gaining tremendous bonus damage and high lifesteal for his next four attacks. Mischief, an innate ability available to Monkey King at the very beginning, lets Sun Wukong disguise himself as a world object, such as a tree, a rune, a dropped item and a courier, very briefly becoming invulnerable upon transforming. Wukong's Command is his ultimate ability, letting him summon clones of himself to stand stationary within a ring and attack enemy heroes who approach them, as well granting bonus armor to both Monkey King and his clones as long as Monkey King stays within the ring.


  • Critical Hit Class: Much of Monkey King's damage potential comes from Jingu Mastery and Boundless Strike. The former, if it hits one enemy hero four times, grants Monkey King a massive damage bonus for his next four attacks. The latter is an area-of-effect spell that stuns and deals critical damage to all enemies it hits based on Monkey King's damage. If a Monkey King player successfully chains four hits on one enemy hero, they can potential deal a massive amount of damage with one Boundless Strike, usually grounds for a team wipe, especially if Monkey King picked the talent that grants +100% bonus damage to Boundless Strike.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Possibly beating out Puck for the snarkiest hero in the game, with a sarcastic jab ready for just about everyone else.
  • Developer's Foresight: While Mischief is active, Monkey King's movement speed is normally set to 200. If he's disguised as a courier, he instead has 350 movement speed, the same as an unupgraded courier.
  • Four Is Death: Jingu Mastery gives Monkey King a very significant damage bonus on his next four attacks if he attacks a single enemy hero four times.
  • Fragile Speedster: Tree Dance grants Monkey King incredible mobility, and gives him great opportunities for surprise attacks to quickly end enemy heroes before they have a chance to retaliate. But he's vulnerable if caught by the enemy, since damage will set Tree Dance on cooldown if he's not standing on a tree. It's even worse if a tree he's standing on is destroyed, because it will stun him for 4 seconds.
  • Glowing Eyes: When he has the second and third forms of his Arcana, Monkey King's eyes can be seen glowing.
  • Herd-Hitting Attack: Two of his spells, Boundless Strike and Primal Spring, can hit multiple enemies.
  • Irony: In his trailer, Monkey King is seen beating up the shit out of Beastmaster, while in the game Beastmaster is a very strong counter to Monkey King: the hawk can spot Monkey King when he's sitting on a tree, Wild Axes is a spammable tree-cutting ability, the boar's strong slow makes it difficult to build up Jingu Mastery stacks, and Primal Roar, like all long BKB-piercing disables, is especially strong against squishy, slippery foes like Monkey King.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's haughty, egotistical, and practically lives to mess with people and get in fights, but he's also surprisingly caring. He refuses to become a pit fighter on principle and has some good things to say about his allies at times.
    Monkey King: "You're a hero Clinkz. Not enough people give you credit for that."
  • Master of Illusion: As seen in the Monkey King teaser, he utilizes his trademark "pull hair, and then turn them into his clones technique to spawn illusions. Mischief allows him to disguise himself.
  • Meta Guy: Monkey King's responses toward other heroes can be summed up as the result of taking a Deadpan Snarker and giving him access to every shred of backstory in the game.
  • Monkey King Lite: Despite being closer to the actual Sun Wukong himself, Monkey King doesn't follow Journey to the West to the tee. For instance, it was the Four Spirits (Earth, Storm, Ember, Void) that sealed him, not Buddha, so he's kind of 'Wukong, but not exactly the Wukong'.
  • Nobody Here but Us Statues: Mischief allows Monkey King change his form to deceive enemies, with the forms including trees, runes, items, and the courier.
  • Non-Standard Skill Learning: Monkey King is one of the few heroes in the game with an innate skill, Mischief. Tree Dance also contains a sub-ability called Primal Spring, which is levelled up at the same time as Tree Dance and can only be used when it's active.
  • Obvious Rule Patch: Prior to 7.04, Monkey King can apply bash from Skull Basher or Abyssal Blade to all of his clones from Wukong's Command, which resulted to entire enemy teams getting stunlocked. He and his clones also gain bonus damage on the duration of the skill, making him a fearsome support in conjunction with his ability to roam with Tree Dance. Then the patch rolls in, he can't apply bash to his clones anymore, and gains increased armor instead. This made the support Monkey King role much less viable, as without the ability to bash the entire enemy team with Wukong's Command with his bonus damage, he requires far more farm to be come online, locking him to the carry role.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: One of the possible Mischief disguises is a banana. Given that the Banana item was removed in the same patch Monkey King was introduced, it's probably not going to fool anyone except towers and creeps.
  • Pretender Diss: As a Mythology Gag, he has a couple directed towards Earthshaker (who shares Sun Wukong's backstory from Journey to the West) and Phantom Lancer (who was initially designed as a Monkey King Lite).
  • Promoted to Playable: Unlike Invoker, Elder Titan and Phoenix, Monkey King wasn't a hero proper in Defense of the Ancients, having only been an Optional Boss. This makes Dota 2 his debut as a hero.
  • Public Domain Character: Just like Zeus, Monkey King here is the actual Sun Wukong from Journey to the West, though some of his original feats are reworked to fit in with the Dota lore.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Havoc of Dragon Palace set changes Monkey King's eye colour to red.
  • Self-Duplication:
    • Wukong's Command creates a small army of invincible Monkey King clones within a circle that will periodically attack nearby enemies, disappearing when Monkey King leaves the circle by any means.
    • Aghanim's Scepter passively summons a clone every few seconds.
  • Shapeshifting Trickster: In playstyle form, as he is reliant on tricks and surprises to gain the upper hand on his enemies.
  • Shipper on Deck: Surprisingly he knows that there were some old chemistries between Juggernaut and Templar Assassin, and was curious why currently they broke up.
  • Telescoping Staff: Wouldn't be the Monkey King without it. He puts it to good use with Boundless Strike, letting him hit enemies from a long distance.
  • Tree Cover: With Tree Dance, Monkey King can lay an ambush for the enemy team by leaping on treetops.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: Mischief lets Monkey King transform into various items such as trees, runes, or couriers in order to hide himself while becoming invulnerable for a split-second.
  • Working with the Ex: Monkey King and Broodmother of all heroes have... history. note  Even though things are clearly long over between them, it's possible to have them on the same side... or trying to kill each other.
    Monkey King: (Upon meeting an allied Broodmother in lane) Let's just get through this Arachnia.

    Morphling 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Morphling_1763.png
Voiced by: David Scully (original), Jack Daniel (Dota Underlords)

On the eve of the ancient War of the Vloy, the opposing armies witnessed a comet in the sky, taking it as an omen. But as the two sides fought by the banks of a river, the comet crashed in the nearby waters, instantly melting and revealing its true form as the Morphling, an elemental entity as protean as the waters composing his form. He immediately took on the form of the first soldier to step foot in the river before striking him dead. Soon, the Morphling entered the battlefield, killing any soldier he encountered before assuming their shape. By the time the fighting had ceased, the Morphling had taken on every military role in the war, shaping him into a creature that knew conflict and nothing else.

The versatile Morphling is a hero most often played as a carry, who can change at will from Glass Cannon to Stone Wall thanks to his signature skill: Attribute Shift. This pair of toggled abilities causes Morphling's strength points to be turned into agility, or vice-versa, allowing him to increase his health or damage depending on the situation. His second skill Adaptive Strike is actually two abilities. One deals damage to a target based on Morphling's agility, the other stuns and knocks back a target for a duration and distance based on Morphling's strength. However, when one Adaptive Strike is used, the other goes on cooldown for 3 seconds. As such, Morphling can easily tweak his approach depending on the situation. With his Waveform ability, Morphling turns into a wave of water that rushes forwards, damaging enemies in the way, while becoming invulnerable while dashing. Due to its long range, it's useful for initiating, chasing, and escaping from bad situations. Morphling's ultimate ability and namesake, Morph, has him temporarily copy the form of a nearby enemy hero (or allied hero with a talent). While morphed, Morphling uses the target's base attributes, attack range, movement speed, and can use all of their basic abilities, but retains any items Morphling was carrying and can be shifted out of at any time. However, they are still Morphling, and dying during Morph is still a death. Fitting the constantly shifting nature of water, Morphling proves to be incredibly adaptive to a range of situations, provided the player behind the wheel can put his skillset into practice.

In Dota Underlords, Morphling is a tier 2 hero. His ability, Waveform, sends Morphling surging forwards, turning him briefly invulnerable and damaging foes in his path.


  • Achilles' Heel: Attribute Shift works even when disabled, letting Morphling recover health even while being stunlocked; however, he has to activate it before the first disable hits. As a carry Morphling tends to walk around with all his points morphed into Agility, not being quick enough on the draw can get him blown up very quickly if the enemy team also has high burst damage.
  • Blob Monster: He is made out of water, but his constantly shifting form certainly resembles one.
  • Call-Back: Morphling's ultimate, Morph, originates in original DotA before he was reworked. In his original incarnation, he can even type in the enemies' chat, bringing more confusion to the enemy team.
  • Came from the Sky: Riding a meteor, no less.
  • Confusion Fu: Morphling's greatest strength is the ability to shift between strength and agility. One minute he might be a frail but powerful Glass Cannon scything down your team with Adaptive Strike, the next time you meet him he might have become a nigh-unkillable Stone Wall or anything in between these two extremes.
  • Dash Attack: Waveform turns Morphling invulnerable and surges him forward, dealing damage to everything it passes through.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Morphling as a whole. Due to the way that its skillset works, a good Morphling plays requires tons of mechanic understanding and teamwork to be used at its maximum potential, such as knowing when to commit and avoid damage instances with Waveform, gauging the amount of stats needed to balance between survival and damage output, the usage of Adaptive Strike, and finally an optimal usage of Attribute Shift. Morph, when used properly, its one of the most versatile ultimate in the game, able to give Morphling an entire new skillset at a moment's notice.
  • Ditto Fighter: When Morphling uses Morph, he turns into a copy of an enemy hero that can use all of that hero's regular abilities. It both counters and synergises well with heroes with powerful non-ultimate abilities like Undying's Tombstone and Pugna's Nether Ward.
  • Dumb Muscle: While Morphling has abnormally high Strength and Agility growth, his base Intelligence and Intelligence growth are among the worst in the game, meaning he can't freely use his expensive spells until he gets farmed.
  • Dynamic Entry: Waveform has great range, allowing Morphling to easily chase down fleeing enemies or escape from gankers.
  • Elemental Shapeshifter: A creature made of water that can morph into a watery clone of any opponent.
  • Emerald Power: His Immortal items, Blade of Tears and Crown of Tears, being based on the in-game item Ethereal Blade (which used to be one of the most popular late-game items for Morphling when it deals damage based on the wielder's primary attribute instead of the target's), have a mystical green glow. They also give his Waveform and Adaptive Strike abilities a green effect to match.
  • Glass Cannon: Early in the game, if Morphling shifts most of his strength into agility, his health pool becomes pathetically small, but his attacks become insanely powerful, and Adaptive Strike deals huge damage. Of course, players using this strategy tend to purchase items to boost Morphling's health in order to remedy this, making him into a Lightning Bruiser later in the game.
  • Great Escape: Morphling can be extremely hard to pin down unless he's silenced (and even then he has methods of avoiding death). Waveform makes Morphling invulnerable, so not only can it easily disjoint any incoming attacks and spells, it can dispel already-placed disables without penalty such as Slark's Pounce and Puck's Dream Coil. He can also survive for a bit longer by using Attribute Shift (Strength) to give himself more health and avoid being burst down. Finally, Morph can be used to give him another mobility skill on top of Waveform from an enemy hero like Phoenix or Anti-Mage and comes with a light dispel on transformation.
  • Invulnerable Attack: Waveform turns Morphling invulnerable and unselectable when he's dashing.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Because Morphling can shift stat points between Strength and Agility, he can become extremely tanky by shifting lots of points into Strength, or he can deal loads of damage by shifting points into Agility (which has the side benefit of granting him more armor, making him more durable against physical attacks). With enough items, Morphling can dump all of his Strength to Agility while still having more than 3k hp, being capable of taking tons of damage and dealing tons of damage. Regardless of how much damage or health he has, his Waveform spell makes him very mobile.
  • Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Because Adaptive Strike deals its spell damage based on Morphling's Agility, which scales, it's one of a bare half-dozen or so nukes in the game that plays this trope straight.
  • Magikarp Power: On his own, Morphling starts as a ranged carry with very low range and mediocre base damage. Although Morphling makes up for it by having a fairly high amount of magical damage output and a high amount of survivability with the ability to become a Glass Cannon or a Stone Wall, that's also hindered by his abysmal mana pool, which runs dry after one Waveform. Give Morphling the farm he needs and he quickly becomes a huge threat, capable of doing massive amount of burst and sustained damage both Physically or Magically, mobility with his spells, and is extremely hard to pin down and burst down. And of course, getting levels gives him more attributes to shift around, making him that much tankier and harder-hitting.
  • Magic Knight: Morphling is notable for being one of the few heroes in the game who is capable of dealing immense amounts of both Physical and Magical damage simply by building up his Agility through items and levels. When he's not using the Shotgun to instantly wipe a squishy support off the battlefield within a second, he can right-click enemies down extremely quickly, his only real limitation being that he is largely a single-target focused hero that can take down enemies one at a time rather than several at once.
  • Making a Splash: He's MADE of water.
  • Monster Modesty: Morphling has a surprisingly large wardrobe for a Blob Monster.
  • Multiform Balance: Despite not technically transforming aside from using his ultimate, Morphling pulls this off with Attribute Shift and Adaptive Strike. Depending on how he distributes his stats, Morphling can be either a low-damage Stone Wall with a long stun, or a Glass Cannon with high attack damage and a huge nuke.
  • No Name Given: The only hero without a given name in either the original Defense of the Ancients or Dota 2. He's just "Morphling".
  • Non-Standard Skill Learning: Adaptive Strike and Attribute Shift each are two slightly different skills that are levelled up at the same time.
  • Shout-Out: To Magic: The Gathering Morphling. Especially his third skill, which effectively lets him shift his stats between health and damage at will.
  • Stone Wall: Morphling can become one by putting most of his points into Strength over Agility. While he hits like a wet noodle and his main nuke is weaker, he also becomes stupidly hard to gank with his mobility and durability, and Adaptive Strike becomes a much better stun instead.
  • Surprisingly Sudden Death: The popular "Shotgun" build: shift as many points into Agility as possible and buy Ethereal Blade. Using Ethereal Blade's active ability Ether Blast plus Waveform and Adaptive Strike (which does more damage as you put more points into agility, meaning that it can scale with levels and agility items), can deal upwards of one thousand magic damage to a single enemy, which is only sometimes exceeded by Lion's Finger of Death and Lina's Laguna Blade, both of which require Aghanim's Scepter (a farm-intensive item on non-carry heroes) and both of which don't scale as you level up. This is enough to burst down, not just supports, but carries as well, even in the late game. This build is no longer applicable as of 7.31 when Ethereal Blade deals damage based on the target's primary attribute rather than the wielder's.
  • Twin Maker: Morph allows Morphling to copy a hero wholesale sans ultimate ability and innate abilities. Other than having Morphling's items, he is for all intents and purposes the same hero.
  • The Villain Knows Where You Live: Played for laughs.
    Morphling (killing Tidehunter): "I know where you live, Tidehunter!"
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: Morph allows Morphling to shift his form, transforming into an enemy hero.
  • Why Won't You Die?: Morphling can be extremely hard to kill if he's pinned down since he can cast Attribute Shift (Strength) in order to increase his HP. This means that even if he's jumped on by the enemy team, they'll have to either silence or hex him in order to prevent him from gaining even more HP as he runs away, all the while hoping that he doesn't cast Waveform.

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