Characters / Dota 2 Intelligence N To Z

This is part of the character sheet for Dota 2. This page contains the Intelligence heroes that begins with the letter N to Z. Please note that this is sorted not by their real names, but their most common moniker, 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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Nature's Prophet

"Who dares to bring an axe into my sacred groves, will find themselves cut down."

Voiced by: Eric Newsome

When Verodicia, Goddess of the Woods, finished creating the world's greenery, she realized she had a problem. Having expended much of her own life to plant the world's forests, she knew her time was nearing its end and that the nascent woods of the world would be vulnerable without her protection. As her final act, she took a single last seed from her sowing pouch and imbued it with her power before swallowing it as she fell to the ground, her divine body nourishing the world's vegetation over the winter. And then on the morning of the vernal equinox, the seed in her body burst open, and from it stepped forth the Nature's Prophet fully grown. Strong and wise, he is a stalwart protector of the wilds, able to foresee wherever he is needed so that he may lend Verodicia's power to aid in the defense of the green places of the world.

Nature's Prophet is a highly mobile hero with global pushing, farming, and ganking potential. With a highly versatile moveset, he can fill almost any role on a team, but is generally played as a pusher and carry. With Sprout, the Prophet summons a ring of trees around a target, which can be used to trap enemies or be combined with his other abilities. Teleportation is the crux of Nature's Prophet's global presence, letting him teleport to any point on the map for instant ganks and escapes, or simply accessing the jungle for farming. Upon arriving, he gains stacks of bonus damage, and on each attack he consumes a stack to grant himself armor instead. Prophet's third ability, Nature's Call, lets him convert trees in an area into Treants to fight alongside him; with their sheer numbers and Nature's Prophet's instant access to trees via Sprout, the Treants can easily overwhelm neutral creeps, enemy creep waves, and enemy towers alike, and serve as his main farming and pushing tool. Finally, his ultimate ability Wrath of Nature unleashes a global-range bolt of energy that bounces between visible enemies, gaining power with each bounce, letting him smite heroes from afar and mow down enemy pushes in multiple lanes. With the entire battlefield within his reach, Nature's Prophet can quickly gather steam and unleash nature's wrath upon the enemy.

In Dota Underlords, Nature's Prophet is a tier 2 hero. His ability, Nature's Call, summons a treant on the edge of the board; this treant is considered part of the Druid alliance.

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• Adaptation Species Change: From a Night Elf to a Nature Spirit.
• Anti-Escape Mechanism:
  • Sprout is not a real disable (until Nature's Prophet reaches level 20, which allows it to either leash or inflict a 100% miss chance on the target), but it can prevent any unit inside from moving for up to five seconds unless they have a mobility spell, something that can destroy trees, or a Force Staff. This can be augmented with any items that Nature's Prophet manages to farm up, most often a Scythe of Vyse.
  • Teleportation can be used not only for global positioning, but also for short-range jumps to cut off fleeing enemies. As long as someone sees what direction your target is going, Nature's Prophet has a very good chance of catching up and finishing them off.
• Ascended Meme:
  • One common way to play Nature's Prophet is splitpushing: abusing Teleportation, Nature's Call and Wrath of Nature to constantly push all lanes and apply pressure on the enemy team, while at the same time avoiding teamfights, using Teleportation to quickly bail out when the enemy comes to gank. Because of how infuriating it is to play against this strategy, it's often derogatorily called 'Rat Doto'. Come The International 2015, Nature's Prophet receives an Immortal staff called Sufferwood Sapling, which has an actual rat hanging from it.
  • Due to his ability to farm the jungle quickly and earn lots of gold, Nature's Prophet is nicknamed "Nature's Profit". The 2016 International Battle Pass gave him a taunt where he dances while surrounded by falling money.
• Born as an Adult: Unless we consider the seed itself Nature's Prophet's infant/child form, this seems to be the case.
• Dynamic Entry: Due to his ability to globally position with Teleportation (which also boosts his attack damage), Nature's Prophet has the uncanny ability to turn the odds in any fight in three seconds, on a cooldown of as low as zero (by comparison, Wisp's Relocate and Underlord's Fiend's Gate take at least one or two minutes, respectively, to come off cooldown). He can turn a two-man gank into a three-man gank (augmented by Sprout and any items he's purchased), or finish off a severely weakened enemy before they can reach the fountain, or solo gank a support who thinks they're safe pushing out lanes since the rest of the other team is visible on the map, or turn a creep wave push completely around by summoning instant reinforcements.
• Enemy Summoner: Nature's Call summons a group of 2-5 treants that have slightly higher stats than regular creeps.
• Fauns and Satyrs: He has a lot of features of a faun, and acts as either help or hindrance to those wandering in his forest.
• Gaia's Vengeance: All of his abilities, but especially his ultimate, Wrath of Nature.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Although he claims to protect nature, he's one of the few heroes who can completely deforest a huge area by summoning treant guards. Similarly, he's also one of the best heroes for running into and depopulating jungles to fill his own pockets.
• Gathering Steam: With every bounce, Wrath of Nature deals more damage and roots enemies (if Nature's Prophet has Aghanim's Scepter) for a longer duration.
• Green Thumb: He can bring trees to life, or generate trees out of nowhere.
• Horned Humanoid: Has two horns on his head, which can be customized with many items.
• Item Caddy: He starts off as a Squishy Wizard with good auto-attack and easy farming, but no reliable damage-dealing spells. But there's one thing he can do perfectly with his skillset - safely earn money to buy items. He also has surprisingly good Agility growth, letting him benefit from items that augment his auto-attacks.
• Jack of All Stats: He can benefit from any item that is sensible on a ranged Intelligence hero, and he can get them as fast as many safe lane carries without meddling with allies' lanes much. Thus his item build can be adapted to any situation - be it a fast push, initiation, damage dealing, ganking, nuking or support - tanking probably being the only role he can't fulfill.
• Mage Marksman: Nature's Prophet has only two damaging abilities, one of which is his ultimate and the other, Curse of the Overgrowth, requires Aghanim's Shard to unlock and only deals Scratch Damage. On the other hand, he has very good stat growth including an abnormally high Agility gain, so he can deal a good bit of physical attack damage when farmed, and he can farm very well.
• Magic Staff: His weapon is a large staff which fires energy bolts.
• Magikarp Power: He starts off as a fairly squishy hero without any damaging spells. But if an inattentive team lets him accumulate experience and money, he becomes one of the most threatening heroes in the game; an omnipresent pusher capable of destroying the entire enemy base pretty much by himself.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Although Nature's Prophet is an Intelligence hero, he relies mostly on increasing the effectiveness of his auto-attacks (by purchasing loads of items) and the element of surprise to make kills happen (making him one of the game's few INT carries); his ultimate being his only nuke, which has a hefty cooldown and can't be precisely aimed. Unlike most other carries in the game, he doesn't have a huge amount of damage output or durability, but relies on global positioning and game sense to emerge victorious.
• Money Multiplier: While Nature's Prophet does not have any innate ability to increase the amount of gold he earns (like Alchemist's Greevil's Greed and Doom's Devour), his combination of Nature's Call and Teleportation means that he has no turnaround time (he doesn't have to spend time walking back to base to replenish mana), and his Treants can tank jungle creeps while farming (or carry on jungling while he's not there). This means that, any time that he's not ganking or pushing a lane (both of which he can do within 3 seconds from anywhere on the map), he's either killing jungle camps or healing in the fountain. Throw in a Hand of Midas as well for massive profit.
• Nature Hero: Uses the power of the forest, granted by the goddess Verodicia, to protect nature.
• Nature Spirit: He embodies the final traces of the Goddess of the Woods' power.
• Never Given a Name: Nature's Prophet's original name was Furion. His Dota 2 name had to be changed to Tequoia in order to avoid copyright issues with Blizzard, but this name was then removed for unspecified reasons.
• Pinball Projectile: Wrath of Nature bounces around the map, hitting targets closest to the cast point that Prophet can see.
• Plant Mooks: The treants created with Nature's Call are an important part of Nature's Prophet's pushing playstyle.
• Plant Person: Was born from a seed, seems to have grass growing from his legs, and can bring trees to life and make them obey his commands.
• Squishy Wizard: While Nature's Prophet's Strength growth actually isn't too shabby, he'll almost never actually build durability items, favoring items for pushing or ganking. If he gets caught out and can't teleport away, he's in trouble.
• Stone Wall: His Treants come in large packs and have much more health than comparable summons such as Lycan's wolves and Enigma's Eidolons, but do noticably less damage, serving mostly as meatshields while he does much of the damage himself.
• Summon Magic: Nature's Call destroys all trees in an area, and converts a number of them into Treants.
• Teleport Spam: Nature's Prophet is the only hero in the game next to Wisp who can teleport himself to any location on the map at will without the need for items (or friendly units/buildings at the destination). At later levels Teleportation has a very short cooldown (or none at all with one of the level 25 talents), making him excellent for ganking, chasing, and otherwise turning up where he's unexpected (since unlike other teleports which rely on the presence of a nearby building or friendly unit, he can appear on any point on the map). This makes him one of the most mobile heroes in the game and one of the best at taking towers off a distracted team. This same ability is also what allows him to farm so effectively, as any time that's not spent ganking or pushing (which, by the way, also earns him gold) can be spent killing jungle camps or healing in the fountain.
• Tree Cover: One of the uses of Sprout is to hide an allied hero or yourself from enemies with a ring of trees. A common gank tactic is to teleport inside the forest along the lane, wait for the target to approach, and then clear the forest using Nature's Call.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: By default, Nature's Prophet doesn't wear a shirt, and neither does he have a shirt slot for cosmetic items, though some items in his shoulder slot extend down far enough to cover his chest.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Sprout can be countered by the Quelling Blade, which can be bought right at the start of the game for a piddly 100 gold (and is already a popular purchase for anyone trying to farm or last-hit creeps in lane while being a trivial purchase for even support heroes), as well as the ubiquitous Tangos. Players who are prepared for the spell and quick on the keyboard will barely be slowed down by it at all. However, the only item Quelling Blade builds into is the Battle Fury, which is useless on ranged heroes and only a few melee heroes can really make use of it, meaning that as the game goes on, and Quelling Blade has to be sold to make room for better items, the spell becomes more useful (support heroes do often hold onto theirs due to not usually being strapped for item slots). Force Staff, a common item for supports (and which can be used on other players) also easily counters the spell. And anyone with the range to hit back from inside the trees, like Sniper or Drow Ranger, makes the trees mostly pointless, at least if Nature's Prophet is by himself.
• When Trees Attack: Nature's Call and himself invoke this.
• Zerg Rush: Treant Guards are pretty much slightly stronger regular melee creeps, only lane creeps gain upgrades every 7.5 minutes which makes them outclass the Treants very quickly. He makes up for this with sheer numbers, being able to spawn a total of 5 of them each time he uses Nature's Call. Combined with said lane creeps, and you have a lot of forces pushing towards a tower.

Rotund'jere, the Necrophos

"Behold the Pope of Pestilence."

Voiced by: Sam A. Mowry

Rotund'jere was a monk of the Cathedral of Rumusque who found himself unexpectedly promoted to Cardinal when his superiors were all killed by a plague ravaging the lands at the time. Scheming to use his position to enrich himself, Rotund'jere convinced dying nobles to give him their material wealth and possessions in exchange for spiritual rewards instead of helping the sick as his fellow clergy were doing. When the plague was finally put under control, his actions came to the attention of the Cathedral leaders, who put him on trial for heresy and sentenced him to work in the plague ward, placing spells on him that would cause the disease to kill him as slowly as possible. But Rotund'jere had developed an immunity to the plague, and instead of dying, he was made stronger by the illness. Soon, he became capable of controlling the disease and declared himself the Necrophos, now wandering the world to spread sickness and pestilence wherever he goes.

Necrophos is a ranged Intelligence hero whose abilities are most effective in team fights where he can damage enemies and heal allies simultaneously, while picking off key enemy heroes with his ultimate. Necrophos is most dangerous when his enemy is severely injured, instantly killing them with his ultimate while recovering over time after killing his foe. Because his abilities are suited to prolonged encounters, he must build items which counteract his inherent frailty and allow him to survive for as long as possible against his enemies. His bread-and-butter ability is Death Pulse, a low-cooldown spell that heals nearby allies and damages nearby enemies. Ideally, by casting Death Pulse repeatedly, he and his team are able to stay alive while the enemy team's health is gradually sapped by Heartstopper Aura, which reduces enemy HP by a small percentage each second; additionally, this ability passively grants bonus health and mana regeneration to Necrophos when he kills a creep or hero. Ghost Shroud further increases Necrophos' survivability against physical damage-dealers, allowing him to become ethereal and slow nearby enemies, keeping them in his presence for longer and warding off their attacks while letting him heal significantly faster; however, he also becomes more vulnerable to magic damage. His ultimate, Reaper's Scythe, first binds the target in place, then strikes them with a vicious blow, dealing magic damage based on their missing health, able to outright kill those below a certain threshold and grant Necrophos a permanent boost to health and mana regeneration if it does. In addition, should the target die before the scythe hits, the kill is awarded to Necrophos. Necrophos is best understood as a hero who is weak at the beginning of a fight but becomes more dangerous with each passing second.

In Artifact, Necrophos is a black hero. Sadist, his Reactive Ability, increases his health by 1 when a neighboring enemy dies. Heartstopper Aura, his signature card, is a spell which modifies a black hero, causing it to deal 2 piercing damage to enemy neighbors before each action phase.

In Dota Underlords, Necrophos is a tier 4 hero. His ability, Death Pulse, heals nearby allies and damages nearby foes.

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• Beard of Evil: Has a large beard which has the same Sickly Green Glow as the rest of his body, and can be customized with various cosmetic items. And he's plenty evil, as his goal in life is to spread suffering and disease wherever he goes.
• Body Horror: And he absolutely loves talking about it.
• Combat Medic: Necrophos's first ability, Death Pulse, deals damage to enemies and heals his allies within a certain radius. It also can't be evaded through blinking or teleportation, so it'll eventually hit its target no matter what.
• Cursed with Awesome: The plague was supposed to slowly kill him, but he was immune to it and became a Plague Master instead.
• Damage Over Time: Heartstopper Aura removes a small percentage of HP from all enemy units... within a screen's radius, every second. In order to deal ludicrous amounts of damage Necrophos just needs to walk along with the party and chase off fleeing enemies, and it isn't unheard of to outright kill fleeing enemies with the passive alone.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Though Necrophos initially doesn't deal much damage, Death Pulse and Heartstopper Aura damage can constantly add up to ludicrous levels in a prolonged fight, before he finishes his victim off with Reaper's Scythe.
• Evil Old Folks: He's a wrinkly, bearded old man who wishes to spread disease wherever he can.
• Evil Sorcerer: Necrophos has incorporated a deadly plague into his magical arsenal, and spreads it to kill people because he enjoys it.
• Field Power Effect: Necrophos' passive Heartstopper Aura degenerates a percentage of every nearby enemy's maximum HP every second. While 3.2% per second doesn't sound like much, being in a teamfight for just 20 seconds means that you can remove 64% of their max HP. Its huge radius means that it is possible to actually finish off fleeing enemy heroes simply by walking after them, since they will still take the damage even outside of direct combat.
• Finishing Move: Reaper's Scythe is tailor-fitted for this purpose, since it deals damage based on the victim's missing HP, so it is more powerful when its target is low on health, and the permanent regeneration bonus is only granted if it manages to finish off its target (fortunately for Necrophos, anyone who dies while under the effect of the spell automatically is credited as a kill to him). A Necrophos that uses Reaper's Scythe and fails to net a kill with it is either using it as a last-ditch stun or using it wrong.
• Fixed Damage Attack: Heartstopper Aura deals damage based on enemies' maximum HP.
• Ghostly Chill: With Ghost Shroud, Necrophos can take on a ghostly form and slow nearby enemies.
• Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: His eyes glow a ghostly white.
• Healing Factor: With at least one point in Death Pulse and Heartstopper Aura, Necrophos gets absurd amounts of HP and mana regeneration, making him one of the few Heroes in the game who will rarely/never have to go back to base except to buy items. Ghost Shroud also amplifies all of Necrophos's regeneration while active, and Reaper's Scythe permanently boosts his regeneration if it nets a kill. As such, a high-level Necrophos can often tank his way through teamfights by just healing himself faster than the enemy can kill him. His Aghanim's Scepter actually weaponizes his Healing Factor, boosting Heartstopper Aura's damage by 60% of his health regen; this becomes especially fun with a lot of Reaper's Scythe stacks and/or a Heart of Tarrasque.
• Healing Shiv: Death Pulse is described as a wave of death that can somehow heal Necrophos' allies.
• Human Resources: Heartstopper Aura gives Necrophos HP and mana regeneration every time he kills anything (including denying). Each individual amount isn't that much, but considering that he only has two active abilities, and that you'll be getting kills each time you last-hit a creep (and you'll be doing this dozens of times in any given match), this means that it's very hard for him to run out of mana even if he spams Death Pulse.
• The Immune: His natural immunity to the plague allowed him to survive his intended punishment of being forced to care for the infected, and actually allowed him to control the disease.
• Injured Vulnerability: Necrophos's ultimate, Reaper's Scythe, deals damage based on how much health the target is missing, meaning that if the victim's below a certain percentage of health, it can potentially result in a One-Hit Kill.
• Kill Steal: If an enemy hero dies when affected by Reaper's Scythe, Necrophos will be credited with the kill and benefit from the regeneration from Heartstopper Aura, no matter who actually finished off the target.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Necrophos is a rare case of a caster who scales (although through unusual ways), which is what allows him to carry.
  • While Death Pulse's damage doesn't scale to the late game, it only has a measly 5-second cooldown. The longer Necrophos survives in a fight and the more mana he has, the more times he can spam Death Pulse, allowing him to continuously keep his allies alive while wearing his enemies down. Late game, if built as a tank, Necrophos can spam Death Pulse indefinitely while being almost unkillable.
  • Due to being a form of Fixed Damage Attack, Heartstopper Aura actually deals more damage the tougher an enemy is. At max level, it is capable of killing any enemy inside of 67 seconds by itself, making it an extremely powerful aura if teamfights drag out too long.
  • Reaper's Scythe, as an inversion of Percent Damage Attack, has the ability to instantly kill any enemy once they fall below a certain health threshold, making it an unspammable but more powerful version of Axe's Culling Blade (though without the ability to pierce through Death Prevention effects), which can only cull a target below a flat amount of HP. And upon killing an enemy with Reaper's Scythe, Necrophos permanently gains bonus HP and mana regeneration, in addition to the Heartstopper Aura proc.
  • Heartstopper Aura, if upgraded with Aghanim's Scepter, increases it's damage by 60% of his health regen, meaning that as he gains stacks of permanent regen from Reaper's Scythe (on top of any item-based regen such as Heart of Tarrasque), he gains extra damage.
• Magikarp Power: Necrophos is extremely weak early game: Death Pulse costs a lot of mana and needs many levels to be effective, and Heartstopper Aura is his only useful skill as its damage is equally effective at all stages of the game. However, late game, with enough levels and equipment, Necrophos can become extremely tanky with constant Death Pulse spamming and Heartstopper Aura giving him absurd regeneration, and with Death Pulse and Heartstopper Aura he is a walking hazard to the enemy team as long as he lives, before he uses Reaper's Scythe to finish them off, putting them at a huge disadvantage. Ironically these traits means that Necrophos is a bad support, and the fact that he is a carry has become a running joke for the player base, since pubs tend to think that Necrophos is a support.
• Mighty Glacier: Because his first skills can wear down enemies steadily in a teamfight, Necrophos can afford to be built as a tank without any damage items and still be a huge threat. A common (even encouraged!) way to play Necrophos is to build survivability items on him rather than damage items so that he can stay alive longer for teamfights to make full use of Heartstopper Aura and let him spam Death Pulse as much as possible until he can finish a high-priority target off with Reaper's Scythe. As such, it's not uncommon to see Necrophos players build Heart of Tarrasque, Shiva's Guard, and/or Pipe of Insight. The tradeoff is, of course, his miserable base movement speed of 280 with only Death Seeker to help with mobility, making it relatively easy to walk away from him unless he invests in items like Aghanim's Shard and Blink Dagger.
• Monochromatic Eyes: Has solid, white, glowing eyes.
• Mystical Plague: At first, the plague was just a regular disease. But though it ran its course and started to die down, Necrophos gained control over the plague and can now spread it at will using his powers.
• Obvious Rule Patch: During 6.84, Necrophos received a buff to his Heartstopper Aura that makes it affect creep-heroes such as Spirit Bear and Ancient creeps. Once a Reddit mod named Leafeator posted a video on how to jungle ancient creeps, many low-level pub players began picking Necrophos for the sole purpose of AFK jungling, a tactic that is widely criticized by many players as it's easily countered, weakens other lanes and defeats the purpose of this hero as he is a hard carry who needs a tonne of farm and obviously would gain a lot more from laning than jungling. 6.85 patched this exploit out by making ancient creeps immune to Heartstopper Aura.
• One-Hit Kill: Unless an opponent has absurd amounts of magic resistance, has spell immunity, has a special ability active, or is healed or saved by a teammate's Glimmer Cape, Reaper's Scythe will often net a guaranteed kill. With a level 3 ultimate, you only have to drop a target to around 40% HP in order to net a kill unless they have magic resistance items or skills.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: Death Pulse has one of the slowest projectile speeds in the game, at 400 (far slower than even the movement speed cap of 550), allowing high-mobility heroes to run away and heal up if their HP is too low to survive the hit otherwise.
• Plague Master: He enjoys spreading pestilence, adopting titles like the Pope of Pestilence, the Plague Mage, and the Dark Rot.
• The Red Mage: Death Pulse and Death Seeker make Necrophos both a powerful healer and a fearsome nuker, with significant amounts of sustain on top of that.
• Regenerating Mana: The passive component of Heartstopper Aura regenerates mana for every creep kill you get with it. Killing a hero regenerates ten times that amount, more than paying back however much mana you spent casting Reaper's Scythe.
• Revive Kills Zombie: Parodied whenever he grabs a Regeneration rune. It still heals him and restores his mana as normal, however.
  Necrophos (activating Regen rune): "Ugh... Regeneration…"
• Sadist: The implication of Heartstopper Aura granting bonus regeneration after killing a unit is that Necrophos loves killing so much, the pleasure he gains from it actually heals him. In previous versions, this ability was actually a separate ability which was outright named Sadist.
• Scarab Power: The Ancient Egypt-themed Wrath of Ka set changes the projectile and icon of Death Pulse to resemble scarabs.
• Sickly Green Glow: His main color motif is green, representing his power over disease.
• Sinister Minister: Even before getting his powers, he was a corrupt Cardinal who abused his position to coerce the rich into giving him their wealth. After getting his powers, he went off the deep end and now goes around infecting people For the Evulz. Unfortunately, his corruption transformed the Cathedral of Rutusque, once a paragon of virtue who defended the world against monsters from the Field of Endless Carnage, into a Corrupt Church. The Selfish Cleric card in Artifact shows a monk defending himself while leaving a comrade to be overwhelmed by the undead.

  For generations the Rumusque Faithful have defended the living world from the abominations that slink from the Fields of Endless Carnage. We were known as men and women of principle. Of valor. Of Devotion. And then Necrophos tried to destroy us all.
  —Abajen, Rumusque Cleric

• Sinister Scythe: He carries one around (fittingly, also shaped like a shepherd's crook), but only uses it as a Magic Staff. Although his ultimate, Reaper's Scythe, manifests as a giant scythe.
• Spam Attack: Death Pulse's cooldown is extremely short, only 5 seconds when maxed, and combined with his Heartstopper Aura, which returns mana for each unit killed, Necrophos can afford to spam it with ease during a fight once he has a sufficiently large mana pool. It's also the reason why Necrophos is a carry, as he needs mana items so he can spam Death Pulse without running dry for Reaper's Scythe, HP items so he could survive for longer and throw more Death Pulses (good teams will focus him first and he'll melt easily without items), and last hits to fuel Heartstopper Aura.
• Stealth Pun: His name in the original DotA was Necrolyte but was changed to Necrophos in Dota 2. -phos is greek for "light."
• Sudden Name Change: He was known as Rotund'jere the Necrolyte in the original DotA, and was initially called Necrolyte in Dota 2 before being renamed to Necrophos.
• Walking Wasteland: The nature of Necrophos' kit makes him a walking hazard to the enemy team simply due to his very presence in the teamfight: the longer he lives, the more times he can spam Death Pulse and the more damage Heartstopper Aura can deal, without the need of many damage or Intelligence items, though it also means that Necrophos will be a very high priority target for good teams. Because of this, he can very easily be built as a tank and in most circumstances should be. His Aghanim's Scepter upgrade makes this even more of a viable strategy, as it causes his regen to boost the aura's damage. Players will often also throw in a Radiance for good measure, letting him simply melt enemies that stand near him.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The very cheap Glimmer Cape, which costs only 1950 gold and is already a commonly built item on supports, greatly reduces the effectiveness of Necrophos (a position 1 carry hero). It doesn't even take a particularly fast-fingered player to use Glimmer Cape and provide a magic-blocking barrier to the low HP hero that Necrophos just used Reaper's Scythe on. Similarly, Linken's Sphere blocks Reaper's Scythe entirely, and Necrophos has no other abilities that trigger it.
• Why Won't You Die?: A combination of Death Pulse, Ghost Shroud and active healing items like Mekansm can make Necrophos extremely hard to kill unless he's disabled and focused down. Additionally, the bonus regeneration from Heartstopper Aura is multiplied by ten for every hero that Necrophos kills. This allows Necrophos to regenerate large amounts of HP in the middle of a teamfight, making him hard to bring down, especially if he then uses Ghost Shroud to increase the regen further and protect himself from physical damage.
• You Are in Command Now: Rotund'jere rose to become a Cardinal in the first place because all of his immediate superiors died to the plague.

Nerif, the Oracle

"I have an end in mind for you."

Voiced by: Mike Shapiro

In the Ivory Incubarium, Oracles are bred, raised, trained, and sold to the Graven King of Cymurri. For generations, their mystic utterances, gained from astral travellings, would be interpreted to grant the king the best course of action, and Cymurri flourished under their advisings. But Nerif was no normal Oracle: instead of answering the questions he was asked, he would make his own predictions, which would then infallibly come true. It was as if he was actively shaping the future rather than merely seeing it. These predictions resulted in Cymurri being thrown into multiple wars, and the king's advisors attempted to get rid of him. But when Nerif's prediction of the Incubarium's destruction came true, they dcided to stop with their plans out of fear for their lives. The Graven King however realized that he could take advantage of these predictions: by manipulating Nerif into saying what the king wanted to hear, he could guarantee the most favorable outcome to any scenario. It worked well initially, but this all came to an end when, on the eve of a battle with the Unsated Satrap, Nerif refused to say anything other than "It could go either way". The Graven King, confident in his ability to defeat the Satrap, went to war anyway. This proved a mistake as Nerif had meant that the fight would literally go both ways. In the midst of the fighting, reality began to split itself, resulting in every possibility happening at the same time: soldiers were both alive and dead, victorious and defeated. This paradox instantly drove the whole battlefield insane, and the wave of reality-breaking madness began spreading across the planet, then the entire universe. By the time Nerif was expelled from their dimension and into ours by the Graven King's advisors via dimensional barque, their fate had already been sealed.

Oracle is a unique support hero who brings utility the likes of which no other hero can accomplish, but who can hinder his team just as easily as help them. All of his abilities, except for his ultimate, can be cast on both enemies and allies. His first ability Fortune's End has Oracle charge up a blast directed at a hero: when it hits, it roots, damages, and dispels the target and all enemies in an area around them, with the duration of the root equal to the time spent charging. If the initial target is an ally, it only applies the dispel to them, while still applying its regular effect to nearby enemies. With Fate's Edict, Oracle enchants a hero, making it immune to magic damage if it is an ally or disarming it if it is an enemy. Purifying Flames instantly burns a unit with a gout of flame, dealing a large chunk of damage on an extremely low cooldown. However, Oracle cannot spam this with impunity, as the target then begins healing a greater amount than the damage over a short duration. Finally, his ultimate, False Promise temporarily manipulates an allied hero's destiny, immediately removing the majority of negative effects and disables. All damage and healing the target receives over the next couple of seconds is delayed, and instead applied all at once at the end of the duration, with any healing being doubled in effectiveness. This effect takes priority over all other forms of damage prevention, and the accumulated damage is next to impossible to avoid. Aghanim's Shard unlocks the ability Rain of Destiny, which summons rain that heals allies and increases the healing they receive while damaging enemies and reducing their received healing. The difference between glorious success and crushing failure can often be as little as a split second.

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• Amazing Technicolor Population: His skin is blue.
• Anti-Regeneration: Rain of Destiny reduces healing received by enemies standing inside it.
• Artificial Human: The Ivory Incubarium, Nerif's birthplace, is set out as being a Super Breeding Program to supply high quality oracles (artificially bred human-like creatures) to the rich and powerful in exchange for cash.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Oracle's Aghanim Scepter buffs his False Promise buff so that it gives his allies under it Invisibility, reduced Base Attack Time and a huge Spell Damage amplification seemingly turning them into an invincible One-Man Army capable of wiping out the whole team by themselves. But even putting aside the huge costs needed to build it on one of the worst farmers in the game, 99% of the time it was used, it'll be to save a teammate from being killed by the enemy and if said hero that is being ganked happens to be a support or even Oracle himself, then neither of them will benefit much from the upgrade besides Invisibility (which can already be covered by the much cheaper Glimmer Cape). Using it on a Carry the buff them at the start of a teamfight or in the middle of it also proved to be foolish as the Ultimate only lasts for a brief moment with a comparatively long cooldown so all the enemy has to do is simply kite them around before the buff wears off (or even just continue to wail on them to the point that the damage they accumulated is more than enough to negate whatever healing they would have received) at which point they're left vulnerable and since you've already use the Ulti beforehand, you won't be able to use it again to help them (or anyone else for that matter) escape from their imminent doom.
• Badass Cape: As befits a powerful mage, his cape is decorated with rune symbols.
• Bling of War: His regalia is very shiny.
• Charged Attack: Fortune's End can be charged for up to 2.5 seconds. When released, it slows enemies around the target equal to the duration spent channelling.
• Combos: Part of Oracle's shtick is that all of his spells have great synergy with each other, meaning that he can use them together to great effect.
  • Casting Fate's Edict on an ally and then using Purifying Flames will shield them from the initial magic burst while letting the heal buff through.
  • Casting Purifying Flames on an enemy followed with a purge from Fortune's End will allow you to remove the healing buff immediately after they take the burst damage. Alternatively, if you're fast enough, you can channel Fortune's End first and then cast Purifying Flames while the projectile is in flight; not only does this purge the heal off instantly instead of having to wait for the travel time of Fortune's End, but it also allows you to make full use of the Root effect. Eul's Scepter of Divinity also synergizes nicely with his nuking combo, dispelling the heal while trapping the enemy until Purifying Flames comes off cooldown again.
  • False Promise doubles all healing received during it, including the healing of Purifying Flames, meaning that even if not blocked, the target actually gets a net increase in health equal to the damage number and then some. Throw in Fate's Edict to block the damage, and you get some of the biggest healing numbers in the game.
• Crystal Ball: Has a metal filigree floating orb as a weapon, which he holds in a fortune-teller fashion, though he seems to only use it for launching magic projectiles.
• Difficult, but Awesome: What defines Oracle is proper usage of his skills, namely when to use them, what order, and whether on allies or enemies. If poorly used he can hurt his team, but in capable hands is an extremely effective ally and a major frustration for the enemy team.
  • Fate's Edict can either save an ally from nukes with 100% magic resistance or disarm an important carry, so knowing when and who to use it on is crucial. It's also indirectly Oracle's source of healing by blocking the damage from Purifying Flames, so using it to disable a carry can render an ally vulnerable to other enemies.
  • Purifying Flames deals burst damage to a target then heals it back via a buff. Bad usage of Purifying Flames is usually a waste of mana (which is already a problem for Oracle), or worse, might actually heal his enemies, help them burst his allies down faster or put an allied Blink Dagger on cooldown at an inopportune moment if not shielded by Fate's Edict first, but if used well and combined with his other skills, it can prove to be a powerful nuke and healing, able to equally save teammates and kill enemies.
• The Exile: He was so dangerous he was banished into another dimension.
• Exposed to the Elements: The Manifold Paradox comic showed that he lives in a bare observatory on top of an icy mountain. Despite that, his outfit is just some thin robes with no shirt.
• Finishing Move: One of the various uses of Purifying Flames: it deals very high burst damage for a spell with such a short cooldown and low mana cost, and the healing obviously does not kick in if the enemy has already died from the damage.
• Fortune Teller: Possibly subverted in that he seems to be not so much predicting the future as he is shaping it.
• Four-Fingered Hands: He does have four fingers on his hands, presumably a trait of whatever type of alien he is.
• Guide Dang It!: What does Oracle even do? His skills involve the interactions of buffs and dispels, which are some of the most obscure and least understood mechanics of Dota. There’s no tutorial that runs through the list of exceptions for what is a basic dispel, a strong dispel, or what draws the line between a removable and unremovable buff. This kind of knowledge requires both practice and study. Judging by the meagre win rate and popularity of Oracle, it’s fair to say that the public has accomplished neither. This also follows even at higher skill brackets, where his win rate peaks at 45% in the 5k+ MMR bracket, especially considering how other heroes with healing and defensive abilities like Omniknight, Abaddon and Necrophos often have very high win rates in public games. It's not a surprise if your team ask you to explain what Oracle's spells do. Although, to their credit, the Dota 2 team has tried to make dispel mechanics less arcane by listing whether a spell's effects are dispellable and whether they apply weak or strong dispels in ability information boxes, but remembering which spells can and cannot be dispelled is still a lot to take in.
• Humanoid Aliens: He comes from another dimension, but looks fairly humanoid except for his lack of legs.
• Immune to Fate: False Promise temporarily alters an ally's destiny, making him immune to both good and ill until the end of the duration.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: Has metal shoulderpads, bracelets and an astrolabe backpiece that float over him rather than being attached to his body. Also has a metal neck collar that looks like it completely restricts his head movement.
• The Juggernaut: False Promise can be summarised as 'god mode': a buff that can be placed on allies to save them from bad situations, initiate, or fight for an extended period of time with little danger. When used it will remove negative buffs from an ally constantly, and delay all damage and healing on them until the end of the duration. What's more, delayed healing on your allies will be doubled once the duration ends. With an up to 10 second duration and measly 30 second cooldown, this makes Oracle a strong support in almost any scenario.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Purifying Flames can't kill an ally, so using it on an ally on low HP will result in a net gain of HP.
• Last of His Kind: By his own hand, since he made the prediction that tore his dimension apart.
• Leonine Contract: Arguably the Manifold Paradox contract he makes with Phantom Assassin, since Mortred is so desperate for any information that will validate her individuality, that she willingly risks her life by betraying her Secret Circle of Secrets to work for him instead.
• Light Is Not Good: His spells all have a light motif to them, and he might well be one of the most evil heroes in the game. Although his lore did not quite make it clear whether he is actively evil or just a Person of Mass Destruction with no control over his power, his quotes and the sound of his voice clearly make him come off as malevolent; in any case, he's certainly not "good" by any stretch of the imagination.
• Mellow Fellow: The vast majority of his lines are all very non-committal and laid-back.
• No-Sell: Fate's Edict gives an ally 100% resistance to magic damage. Note that this includes Purifying Flames.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Not particularly so ingame - he has damaging spells but is more of a support - but according to lore, he once broke the fabric of reality!
• Power at a Price: Most of his moveset is based around this - whether he uses his spells on allies or enemies, there will be a drawback.
  • Fortune's End can halt an enemy's movement for up to 2.5 seconds, but Oracle has to stand still and channel the ability for an equal amount of time. It can also purge buffs and debuffs almost instantly, but Oracle has to sacrifice the disable in the process.
  • Purifying Flames deals damage, but applies a heal over time.
  • False Promise effectively makes the target invincible for its duration, but all the damage they would have taken for its duration is dealt all at once when it ends.
• Power Crystal: Worn on his headdress.
• Power Echoes: There's a very sinister echo to his voice.
• Power Floats: Oracle floats around instead of walking; his model doesn't even have legs (although he's considered to have two legs by the Battle Pass' Cavern Crawl).
• Prophet Eyes: Even though his eyes are green, they still look like he has cataracts.
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: When he predicted the outcome of a battle "could go either way", it literally went both ways. At once. And then broke the whole universe as a result. Possibly a case of Not So Omniscient After All but his lore doesn't make it clear whether he did it on purpose.
• Reality Warper: Although he seems to think he is prophesying, he actually appears to be actively altering fate, sometimes to horrifying result.
• The Red Mage: Oracle has offensive and defensive capabilities in equal measure. He can either burst down and debuff enemy heroes or save and heal his allies.
• Spam Attack: Purifying Flames, with its meager 2.5 second cooldown, can be cast multiple times in a single engagement, letting him combine it with Fortune's End for heavy nuke damage or Fate's Edict for massive healing.
• Squishy Wizard: While Oracle can greatly bolster the survivability of his allies, he himself goes down quite quickly if caught out.
• Status-Buff Dispel: Fortune's End purges all units in an area around the target, while False Promise dispels all debuffs from the target when used.
• Villainous Cheekbones: To go with his very angular face overall.
• Weather Manipulation: Rain of Destiny summons rain charged with Oracle's magic over the target area.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: Made a prediction that the Ivory Incubarium, where he was created, would be destroyed in an avalanche (upon being threatened that he would be sent back there). Heavily implied in the lore that it was his power that caused it to come true shortly after.

Harbinger, the Outworld Destroyer

"Their sanity I'll shatter, their dreams of conquest I'll destroy."

Voiced by: Tom Chantler

Harbinger, the Outworld Destroyer, is one of a great race of beings from beyond this world. He is a sentry for his people, standing alone on the crystalline Outworld at the edge of the reality. For untold eons, he has gazed out beyond existence for any signs of a disturbance that could threaten the universe, his vast mind attuned to foreboding patterns in the cosmos. While the War of the Ancients and its cosmic repercussions has drawn Harbinger to our world, his arrival is a bad sign in of itself, for he comes to warn of an even greater threat on the horizon.

Harbinger the Outworld Destroyer is a powerful ranged carry hero dependent on having a large mana pool to destroy enemies with massive nuke damage. The crux of his kit is Arcane Orb, an autocastable attack modifier which adds bonus pure damage to Harbinger's attacks based on his mana pool. As Arcane Orb forms the main bulk of his damage output, Outworld Destroyer's item choices focus on augmenting his mana pool and attack speed, leaving him rather fragile. Astral Imprisonment serves both as a defensive ability and a disable, briefly sealing the target into an extradimensional prison while making it invulnerable and dealing damage to surrounding enemies when it ends. With this ability, Harbinger can push lanes, hold enemies in place, or protect vulnerable allies. To offset his heavy mana demand, Outworld Destroyer has Essence Flux, which gives him a chance to restore a percentage of his mana each time he uses an ability. This ability can also be activated to make Outworld Destroyer's spell damage slow enemies on hit. Harbinger's ultimate ability, Sanity's Eclipse, brings his skillset together with both a passive and active component. The passive component, Charge Counter, gives him charges each time he damages enemy heroes with his basic abilities, with each charge increasing his maximum mana. Once he has enough mana, Harbinger can unleash Sanity's Eclipse to heavily damage enemy heroes in an area based on the difference between his mana and theirs (including foes trapped in Astral Imprisonment. He may start out relatively weak, but once he builds up his mana pool, the Outworld Destroyer can quickly and easily snuff out his enemy's sanity – followed by their lives.

In Artifact, Outworld Destroyer is a blue hero. Essence Aura, his Passive Ability, has a 50% chance of restoring 2 mana when a blue spell is cast.

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• Beam Spam: Stacking attack speed items on Harbinger is a perfectly acceptable way to maximize damage from Arcane Orb, since high attack speed means more Essence Flux procs and more massive damage.
• Black Mage: Outworld Destroyer gameplay revolves around stacking mana and blasting the hell out of the enemy team with Arcane Orb and Sanity's Eclipse. While Astral Imprisonment can be used defensively, it's secondary to the primary purpose of draining the enemy's mana so he can nuke them to death with it.
• Continuity Nod: Despite his name being changed from Obsidian Destroyer to Outworld Destroyer several characters still refer to him as "Obsidian". Not to mention he appears to be partially covered in obsidian.
• Cosmic Horror Story: Certainly seems to be part of one. Standing guard against some terror from beyond the stars, coming from another dimension to do battle, and forcing others to realize their infantile knowledge and mortality.
• Dark Is Not Evil: As bad as he may seem, his purpose is to warn the universe about some kind of vague threat.
• Decomposite Character: Older versions of Outworld Destroyer focused on gaining an Intelligence advantage over his foes in addition to mana, with Arcane Orb able to steal Intelligence from enemies and Sanity's Eclipse damaging foes based on Intelligence difference. In 7.23, his kit was reworked to revolve entirely around raw mana, with the Intelligence-based aspects of it being given to Silencer instead.
• Emerald Power: Outworld Destroyer has glowing green highlights across his body and weapon, and is an extraterrestrial creature with formidable magical and mental powers. However, his spells are colored a light blue.
• Energy Ball: Arcane Orb.
• Finishing Move: Sanity's Eclipse deals damage which scales with the difference between Harbinger's and the target's mana, and is usually used to finish off foes whose mana have already been drained by Astral Imprisonment.
• Fixed Damage Attack: Arcane Orb deals Pure damage based on OD's current mana pool, meaning that he benefits from both Intelligence items and raw mana-boosting items.
• Glass Cannon: Harbinger with the right items can potentially one-shot an entire enemy team with Sanity's Eclipse. However, unlike most other carries that would stack Agility or Strength items, Harbinger stacks Intelligence, an attribute that provides little inherent survivability; so much as sneeze on him and the inverse is proven true just as quickly, though Aghanim's Scepter gives him a lifeline in teamfights.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: His whole body, including his eyes, glow blue, and he's a harbinger of doom.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Causes this with Astral Imprisonment, hurting heroes after the end of the duration. Sanity's Eclipse probably does this too, judging by the name, and that the damage taken depends on heroes' mana (which, in turn, is dependent on Intelligence).
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: He has a dark crystalline set of wings.
• Harbinger of Impending Doom: It's in the name. He comes to warn the world of an incoming threat.
• Heroic Second Wind: When dropped below 20% health while he has Aghanim's Scepter, Outworld Destroyer automatically consumes all of his mana to apply a strong dispel to himself and gain a barrier based on his max mana. Because Arcane Orb costs a percentage of his current mana, he can quickly get back his spent mana with Essence Flux to continue raining destruction on the enemy.
• Last of His Kind: He is the last surviving sentry from his outpost.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Played straight (which oddly makes it an inversion of the usual dynamic in Dota) with Arcane Orb, whose damage scales with OD's current mana, making him one of the few INT carries in the game.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Harbinger crumbles in his death animation.
• Locked Out of the Fight: A unit affected by Astral Imprisonment can do nothing (though allies can still move if he has Aghanim's Shard) but becomes invulnerable for its duration except against Sanity's Eclipse.
• Magic Staff: Harbinger's weapon is a staff nearly as long as himself, which fires orbs of energy.
• Mana Drain: When cast on an enemy hero, Astral Imprisonment drains a percentage of its mana pool and gives it to Outworld Destroyer.
• Meaningful Name: Harbinger of Impending Doom, anyone?
• Medium Awareness: With this line:
  Outworld Destroyer (Killing Tinker): Hard carry? I hardly cared.
• Mind Rape: The old version of his ultimate Sanity's Eclipse obliterates any heroes that has lower intelligence than him and burns out the smarter ones' mana. Heroes whose intelligence is higher than Destroyer's are unaffected. Astral Imprisonment probably also qualifies, as it absorbs the enemy's mana, which is governed by the Intelligence stat.
• Mutual Disadvantage: Against Anti-Mage. On the one hand, Arcane Orb deals massive pure damage, easily bypassing both Anti-Mage's armor and Counterspell, while Essence Flux counteracts Mana Break and makes it hard for Anti-Mage to guarantee a big Mana Void. On the other hand, Mana Break also deals damage based on the mana burned, which can really hurt Harbinger due to his low health pool and constant mana supply, and his massive mana pool means that if Mana Void does hit him while he's low on mana, it hits him where it hurts.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Harbinger, the Outworld Destroyer, sure sounds like a threatening name and title. But apparently, the threat he's warning us of is what we really should be running away from.
• Our Sphinxes Are Different: Harbinger's lower body is vaguely feline and he possesses the typical body plan of a winged sphinx, and has a similar association with arcane knowledge.
• Pocket Dimension: As described on Astral Imprisonment:
  Locked away in the pocket between this world and the Outworld, victims realize their infantile knowledge and mortality.
• Power Crystal: Many parts of his body have a crystalline look to them, and he also has a crystal in his Magic Staff.
• Power Echoes: Every single one of his lines.
• Power Floats: He is obviously too heavy to be able to fly just with his wings.
• Power Up Letdown: Outworld Destroyer used to steal intelligence with Astral Imprisonment instead of Arcane Orb, while his old Aghanim's Scepter upgrade automatically caused Astral Imprisonment to affect anything hit by a Sanity's Eclipse. The point was to combo this with Refresher Orb, where the intelligence stealing effect of Astral Imprisonment would boost the damage of the second Sanity's Eclipse to ridiculous levels. After the intelligence steal of Astral Imprisonment was transferred into Arcane Orb, it became one of the worst Scepter upgrades in the game. The added damage from Astral Imprisonment does not justify the purchase of a 4200 gold item on a carry in any way, and the risk of accidentally saving the targets from incoming nukes from Harbinger's team or screwing up their combos is too high (Sanity's Eclipse is a nuke, first and foremost, and not a dedicated initiation/counter-initiation skill). This is why it was eventually changed.
• Psychic Powers: Harbinger's powers are drawn from his mind, and Sanity's Eclipse is explicitly described as a psychic blast.
  Outworld Destroyer: That sharp pain you felt was my intellect.
• Regenerating Mana: Essence Flux gives Harbinger a chance to restore a percentage of his total mana pool whenever he casts a spell. This synergizes well with Arcane Orb since each attack gives him a chance to replenish his mana, and since Arcane Orb costs a percentage of his current mana, he'll almost always be able to get mana back by using it.
• Resource Reimbursement: “Essence Flux” gives him a 30% percent chance of restoring a certain percentage of his maximum mana (from 25% at Level 1, to 55% at Level 4) each time he casts an ability.
• Silicon-Based Life: He's at least partially made of black crystal.
• Situational Damage Attack: Arcane Orb, which deals its damage based on OD's current mana pool.
• Spam Attack: Harbinger could spam Arcane Orb with impunity due to his passive Essence Flux giving him a chance to regenerate a percentage of his mana with each orb.
• Spell Blade: Arcane Orb adds a percentage of Harbinger's current mana pool to his right-click damage.
• Starfish Aliens: He's some sort of psychic alien crystal sphinx griffon... thing.
• Sudden Name Change: Harbinger is infamous among the community for going through more changes to his hero title than anyone else in the game. He was "Obsidian Destroyer" in the original DotA but was changed to "Outworld Destroyer" to get around Obsidian Destroyers being an established creature in Warcraft lore, and then to "Outworld Demolisher" for a short while before becoming "Outworld Devourer" up until 7.28, at which point he went back to "Outworld Destroyer".
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Once Harbinger stacks enough mana, it's entirely possible for Sanity's Eclipse to evaporate entire teams with a single click.
• Throat Light: The inside of his mouth, like much of his body, is glowing teal.
• Time Abyss: Most of it spent waiting for some Sealed Evil in a Can to unveil itself.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Enemies with higher mana than Harbinger are unaffected by Sanity's Eclipse, but his high Intelligence and Astral Imprisonment makes this a tall order.
• Volcanic Veins: Has a glowing vein-like pattern on his body, especially his shoulders and chest.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Unlike other carries, debuff immunity completely shuts Outworld Destroyer down: to dish out massive damage, he absolutely needs Arcane Orb, which is rendered useless by debuff immunity. This applies to him even more than most nukers, since he relies on Pure damage, which debuff immunity blocks entirely whereas magical damage still has some effect. Astral Imprisonment is blocked by BKB as well, so by the time the enemy team gets Black King Bars, he becomes much less of a threat.
• You Can't Fight Fate: A recurring theme in his taunts.

Puck, the Faerie Dragon

"I find myself strangely drawn to this odd configuration of activity."

Voiced by: Jen Taylor

Though Puck is still but a baby, it is the juvenile form of a Faerie Dragon, a creature with an infancy lasts for eons, making it one of the oldest beings on the planet despite its relative youth. With its immense lifespan comes an incomprehensible view on morality, and as a result, it is impossible to determine from a human perspective whether Puck's childlike actions and behavior are for its own entertainment, or serving a greater, more sinister purpose.

Puck the Faerie Dragon is a tricky hero who can use its arsenal of strange abilities to blink around and disappear from sight while blasting its foes with powerful magic. Puck's Illusory Orb combines both damage and mobility: this ability fires an orb of light which damages any foe who touches it. By using its sub-ability, Ethereal Jaunt, Puck can instantly teleport to the orb's location, allowing it to either leap onto enemies from afar or escape from danger. Waning Rift, its second ability, scatters a cloud of fairy dust which damages and silences foes around Puck. Phase Shift causes Puck to disappear into an alternate dimension for a short time, becoming invulnerable. With good timing, this ability can be used to dodge any projectile, making it a great tool to avoid damage or buy time for your Illusory Orb to reach your desired position to Jaunt to. Puck's ultimate ability, Dream Coil, is a powerful teamfighting spell which causes enemy heroes in a small radius to be leashed to a magical shackle. If a target tries to leave this small area, they will take further damage and be afflicted with a lengthy stun, forcing them to make a difficult choice: should they stand their ground and stay in the small radius, making them easy targets for area-of-effect spells, or run away and suffer the damage and stun?

In Dota Underlords, Puck is a tier 2 hero. Its ability, Illusory Orb, fires a projectile which damages foes, while its Dragon alliance bonus unlocks Phase Shift, allows Puck to hide in another dimension to dodge attacks.

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• Ambiguous Gender: Its voice could be argued either way, young male or young female. Never outright stated as to which is true. Early descriptions labelled Puck as a female, but it has been changed to neutral. Lampshaded by the Bastion announcer:
  Rucks: "Cute little fella ain't he…? She. Whatever."
• Anti-Escape Mechanism: Puck is one of the most powerful disablers/chasers in the entire game, capable of using its mobility to hunt down enemies over long distances.
  • Illusory Orb in combination with Ethereal Jaunt allows Puck to effectively be in two places at once, as it can toss an orb and then teleport to it to jump over long distances (including up/down cliffs and through treelines).
  Puck: "Did you mean to elude me?"
  • Waning Rift silences any enemies caught in its wake, preventing them from using any escape spells that they may have (on top of disabling their Blink Dagger for at least the next three seconds), and provides even more mobility to chase.
  • Dream Coil will stun enemies immediately upon casting the spell, and then leashes them to the casting point, preventing them from straying too far lest they snap it and take damage alongside a very long stun (while also preventing teleporting out).
• Badass Adorable: Puck may look like a cute critter straight out of a fairy tale, but that doesn't mean it can't kick your ass up and down the forest. Art Evolution made it even cuter.◊
• Black Mage: Puck's playstyle revolves around jumping right into the entire enemy team, causing as much chaos and dealing as much damage as possible before getting away unharmed.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: As said in its backstory, Puck is not quite as childlike as it seems.
• Confusion Fu: A good player can use Illusory Orb to confuse the enemy about Puck's location - like throwing an orb and moving in the opposite direction, forcing the enemies to split up because Puck may or may not warp to it. And then Blink Dagger, a core item for Puck, further adds to this.
• Deadpan Snarker: Probably the biggest example in the game. Many of its lines are playfully sarcastic. Makes sense, considering how it's inspired by Shakespeare, who featured a good number of sarcastic characters in his work.
• Defog of War: Illusory Orb reveals the area around it while it travels through the air. This allows players to use it to scout up hills or past treelines.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Puck effectively has five active abilities, all of which do different things; clicking of the wrong ability at the wrong time can easily result in death under even the best of circumstances. However, mastery of Puck's abilities allows players to use it as one of the best initiators in the game, able to get in the middle of the enemy team, disrupt them, then escape without a scratch. With only a Blink Dagger, Puck can perform a Blink + Waning Rift + Dream Coil + Illusory Orb + Phase Shift + Ethereal Jaunt combo to effectively neuter the entire enemy team while dealing large amounts of magical damage to them. Of course, pulling off this combo perfectly requires twitch reflexes, and if disrupted then Puck can easily be killed due to its squishiness.
• Dream Weaver: Dream Coil sows confusion by forcing Puck's enemies to vividly dream about their own mortality.
• Energy Ball: Illusory Orb sends out a ball of energy which damages foes; Puck can also teleport to it.
• The Fair Folk: Although Puck usually acts like a cheerful Tinkerbell-esque fairy, some of its lines reveal a much darker part of its personality.
  Puck (killing a hero): "That's for your impertinence."
  Puck (killing a hero): "Get up, if you can."
• Fairy Dragons: Puck, the Faerie Dragon (in fact the original Defense of the Ancients, Puck was one of Warcraft's Faerie Dragons), is a small vaguely reptilian creature with six limbs, insect-like wings, antennae, and a curled tail that splits in two. Described as a Time Abyss with a playful mischievous streak, Puck is able to cast a variety of magic spells that allow it to shift in and out of reality to evade attacks and sow confusion amongst its enemies.
• Fragile Speedster: Puck is one of the most mobile and maneuverable heroes in the game; a player with quick reflexes can easily dodge otherwise lethal projectiles like Pudge's Meat Hook or Sniper's Assassinate. But with one of the worst Strength stats in the game, Puck can be easily taken down with one or two strong nukes if caught out of position, or become stranded if silenced in the middle of a combo.
• Gender Flip: In DotA, Puck has been referred to with masculine pronouns in his Back Story and descriptions while in Dota 2, some skill descriptions (before being changed) identified Puck as being female.
• Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter: Not strictly iambic pentameter, but Puck speaks in a manner meant to evoke this, fittingly enough for a Shakespearian Shout-Out.
• Great Escape: Puck's abilities can be used both to pursue enemies, as well as evade them.
  • Illusory Orb can travel over trees and up/down cliffs, allowing Puck to traverse otherwise impassable terrain via Ethereal Jaunt. This allows Puck to easily escape ground-bound heroes, leaving only blinking foes on its trail.
  • Waning Rift can prevent enemies from casting their spells, which can be anything from damage nukes to kill Puck, or stuns/silences to stop it from casting its other escape spells, while also providing more mobility.
  • Phase Shift makes Puck invulnerable for a short period of time. This not only allows Puck to evade damage, it can also dodge incoming projectiles that are normally otherwise not disjointable even through blinks. Notably, level 4 Phase Shift actually lasts longer than the forced cooldown on Blink Dagger when you take damage, making Puck one of the few heroes that can reliably use Blink Dagger as an escape mechanism.
  • Dream Coil will stop any pursuers cold for a short amount of time, and then prevent them from moving away from the casting point in order to pursue Puck by threatening them with damage and a stun.
• Hypocritical Humor: Is one of Dota 2's more out-there cases of Our Dragons Are Different, but also occasionally points out other dragon heroes' oddities.
  Puck: (Killing Jakiro) "It would seem that almost anything can call itself a dragon in this age."
  Puck: (Killing Dragon Knight) "If you are truly some sort of dragon, you must be a juvenile form."
• The Imp: Puck seems harmless at first sight, but actually flips between acting like a kid and a very grim Deadpan Snarker.
  Puck: (Using the Illusion rune) "One Puck, two Puck, three Puck more!"
  Puck: (Killing a hero) "Will you not rise in my presence?"
• It's All About Me: Some of Puck's lines suggest that it is a bit of an egomaniac.
  Puck: (Dying) "Let the world end now, it matters not to me."
  Puck: (Using the Invisibility rune) "Regrettably, I remove myself from sight."
• Locked Out of the Fight: Puck can briefly do this to itself with Phase Shift. Of course, it's also immune to all effects for the duration, allowing it to be used to dodge projectiles and stuns.
• Meta Guy: Not yet a Fourth-Wall Observer, but Puck has an idea of what's happening around.
  Puck: "What is this, a game of some sort?"
• Money Multiplier: Puck can flash-farm quite quickly with maxed out Illusory Orb and Waning Rift, which can clear out large clumps of lane and jungle creeps at a time while letting it jump from camp to camp. It is also effective at farming in dangerous areas due to its innate survivability, allowing gold to be earned from places that other heroes cannot approach safely.
• Monstrous Cannibalism: According to one of Puck's responses, it grew up eating the Undertree's leaves, stalks, roots, and all of its siblings.
• More Dakka: Taking the appropriate talent at level 25 causes Puck to rapidly fire auto-attacks at enemies that have been hit by Dream Coil. Thus, building right-click damage items are now viable for him!
• Motor Mouth: Unlike most other heroes in the game, Puck's voice lines are announced to all players on both teams whenever it casts any spell excluding Illusory Orb. If not for the ability cooldowns, Puck would be chattier than Storm Spirit.
• Nonstandard Skill Learning: As a sub-spell, Ethereal Jaunt only becomes available when an Illusory Orb is cast.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Puck is a Faerie Dragon, which combines draconic, insectoid, and fey traits.
• Our Fairies Are Different: Seems closer to an insect, though. Pudge even alludes to this when killing Puck:
  Pudge: "Butterflied already."
• Phantasy Spelling: Puck is a Faerie Dragon, not a Fairy Dragon.
• Pocket Dimension: One of Puck's signature abilities is to hide in another world for a couple seconds.
• Power Nullifier: Enemies hit by Waning Rift are silenced for a few seconds, rendering them easy prey for Puck's other skills and its teammates.
• Sadistic Choice: When hit by Dream Coil, you have a tough choice to make - stay in one spot and let the enemy blow you up with their AoE spells while taking heavy damage over time, or try to flee and be stunned? Either way, the end result is usually messy... This can be greatly augmented by purchasing Aghanim's Scepter, which increases the coil's duration to eight seconds, increases the stun duration to four and a half seconds (making it the second-longest stun duration in the game, beat only by Mirana's Sacred Arrow), and causes the stun when breaking the tether to pierce spell immunity. This means that even if you have spell immunity abilities, if you managed to get snagged by Dream Coil you can't just activate spell immunity and break the tether.
• See the Invisible: Waning Rift, when upgraded with Aghanim's Shard, reveals invisible enemy units and wards in the area for 5 seconds.
• Shout-Out: An obvious one to the mischievous fairy Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream, made even more obvious by the dying line; "A midsummer nightmare.".
• Some Dexterity Required: Puck requires extremely quick reflexes to make the most of its abilities, as players will have to juggle a minimum of five different abilities to be casted in a precise order and within a short period of time, and often as many as eight or nine, all while being ready to instantly change the combo order in case something goes awry (on top of all these abilities having between no to extremely short cast animations). Played properly and equipped with enough mobility items, Puck can jump onto the enemy with no warning, disable them with Waning Rift and/or Dream Coil, dodge all of their spells with Phase Shift, all the while jumping away with an Illusory Orb.
• Squishy Wizard: While Puck can be extremely hard to pin down, being silenced or chain-stunned will usually result in an easy kill if caught while initiating.
• Status Effects: Waning Rift silences all enemies in its radius for a few seconds.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Puck is a decent Dagon user due to its high mobility; with Dagon, it can jump onto enemies and unload roughly 1500 points of magical damage within a second. This also means that, when initiating a fight, Puck can instantly turn the engagement into a 4v5 by nuking down the squishiest enemy before getting out.
• Teleport Spam: With Illusory Orb, Puck can teleport to the projectiles it fires, allowing for quick escapes or initiates. Combine with a Blink Dagger, and you get this trope.
• Time Abyss: Just as its backstory says, although Puck sounds very young, it is actually thousands of years old and by the time it reaches adulthood, the world as we know it will already be dust. It even considers characters like Lone Druid (who is literally older than history) young.
• Travel to Projectile: While Illusory Orb is active, Puck can teleport to its location with Ethereal Jaunt.
  Puck: Greetings!"
• Wings Do Nothing: Puck flies around, but can't go over obstacles. It has to jump past them with Illusory Orb.

Pugna

"I renew my vows to cause the most possible suffering."

Voiced by: Gary Schwartz

Near the vents of the Nether Reaches stands a temple devoted to the Arts of Oblivion. Its lama had passed away several years ago, and the temple's regents were searching for youths who might be his reincarnation. The thirteen-month old Pugna was one of the three potential candidates selected from nearby villages to undergo the test. They were presented with the former lama's possessions, with the monks observing how they behaved with these treasures. As the two other children desecrated the arifacts they grabbed, Pugna simply watched them before shouting "Mine!" and blasted them to ash with a gout of nether flame, leaving himself the best and only possible choice for the seat of lama. Although the monks celebrated the arrival of their new grandmaster, it was only five years later when Pugna grew bored of his position and burned the lamasery to the ground, proving himself to be the greatest practitioner of nether sorcery in his temple's history.

Pugna is a ranged Intelligence Hero who possesses powerful abilities which give him great versatility and offensive capabilities. He has a high base Movement Speed and also has the highest Intelligence gain per level in the game, which gives him the highest base stat at level 25. Nether Blast is a powerful AOE nuke which also deals damage to buildings, allowing Pugna to rapidly push out lanes by blowing up creep waves and towers alike. Decrepify turns an unit ethereal, slowing and disarming them while making them immune to physical damage but increasing the magical damage they take. This can be used to make enemies more vulnerable to Pugna and his allies' spells, or save an ally from physical attacks, but the combination of buffs and debuffs granted mean that targets must be chosen carefully. Nether Ward is an excellent teamfight ability which lowers mana regeneration and fires bolts which deal damage to enemies based on the manacost of their abilities, making Pugna a counter to casters. Pugna's ultimate ability, Life Drain, is a channelling ability which saps enemy health and grants it to himself, somewhat making up for his low durability. He can also use this ability on an ally to drain his own health into them. With these spells, Pugna is a versatile caster who can tear apart enemy heroes and their buildings alike, making him a great asset in both teamfights and pushes.

In Artifact, Pugna is a red hero. Nether Blast, his Active Ability, condemns a random enemy improvement. Nether Ward, his signature card, is an improvement which deals 3 damage to the enemy tower whenever your opponent casts a spell.

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• Anti-Structure: Nether Blast can deal damage to buildings, one of only about half a dozen spells that do so. At max level, it can kill towers from outside their deny threshold, preventing enemies from denying the tower and robbing you of the gold. In Artifact, it condemns a random enemy improvement, while Nether Ward is changed to target the enemy tower instead of heroes.
• Back from the Dead: In the lore, he was killed by Viper, but later came back to life.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Pugna can kill himself by using Life Drain to transfer all of his health to an ally, in the process also denying gold and experience to the enemy.
• Can't Catch Up: Pugna is one of the least hard carries in the game: he can come online fairly fast if given solo experience as a mid or safelane farmer, and then push towers extremely quickly with Nether Blast spamming, but as a carry he falls off hard around the 30-35 minute mark, because he doesn't scale well with items, unless if he has heavily snowballed his team with tower bounty.
• Counterspell: The Nether Ward shoots a Mana Flare at an enemy hero every time they cast a spell. The damage is dealt before the spell takes effect, so if the target dies the spell will not be cast at all.
• The Dark Arts: Oblivion magic.
• Dem Bones: He's a walking skeleton.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Decrepify is a versatile but tricky spell to use, as it inflicts its bonuses and drawbacks on friends and foes alike. Time it poorly, and you either saved an enemy by shielding them from your team's physical attacks, or got a friend killed by enemy nukes. But time it right and these scenarios are switched around.
• Empathic Healing: Life Drain can be used to heal allied heroes, at the cost of Pugna's own health.
• Enfant Terrible: According to his backstory, he was barely one year old when he blasted two other kids with fire. Just a few years later, he had burned down the entire lamasery.
• Evil Genius: He has the highest per-level intelligence in the game, and an appropriately enormous mana pool. Just a few levels in, he can spam spells with impunity. And of course, he's one of the most evil characters in the game, getting pleasure from the suffering of others.
• Evil Old Folks: If Viper's backstory, which described the Netherdrake's former master as "old", is anything to go by, Pugna's been bad to the bone from childhood to old age. This also implies his small stature might be due to him being a withered old man.
• Evil Sorcerer: Uses the Arts of Oblivion to cause havoc for his own amusement.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Pugna's voice is surprisingly deep for someone who became undead when still a child.
• For the Evulz: He doesn't have a specific reason to destroy everything, he just loves doing it.
  Pugna (Beginning the battle): Time to earn myself a bad reputation.
• Glass Cannon: He is a Squishy Wizard with unusually short-cooldown, high-damage spells, and even deals damage to buildings with Nether Blast.
• Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: Since he's a skeleton, he doesn't have eyes, instead having glowing green orbs.
• Gratuitous Latin: "Pugna" is the Latin term for "fight" or "conflict", which certainly suits him well.
• Having a Blast: Nether Blast is a spammable spell that creates a powerful explosion over a large area.
  Pugna (Attacking): "A real blast!"
• Hellfire: Both in his back story and in gameplay, Pugna throws around a lot of green flames using Nether magic. He also has a green flame permanently burning inside his rib cage.
  Nether Blast description: The Arts of Oblivion include a deafening blast of emerald flames from the Nether Reaches.
• High Collar of Doom: He easily has the most popped collar in the game. It almost looks like an attempt to compensate for his height.
• Horned Humanoid: Has two large horns on top of his head, which can be customized.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: He's a fragile Intelligence hero that excels at killing other fragile Intelligence heroes with his Nether Ward and Life Drain, which can melt frail supports like Lion or Crystal Maiden.
• Jerkass: Pugna thrives on the grief and misery of others.
• Life Drain: Literally the name of his ultimate, which rapidly deals constant heavy damage to an enemy while channeling it, and restores that amount to Pugna. He can also perform a reverse version on allies to heal them at the cost of his own health. Aghanim's Shard allows him to cast it onto his Nether Ward, which makes it split onto every enemy in range.
• Living Weapon: The Draining Wight cosmetic Nether Ward, which is described as part bone, part spirit.
• Mana Burn: Nether Ward applies mana degeneration within its range, and casts Mana Flare at anyone who uses mana-consuming abilities, dealing from 100% to a whopping 490% (with Refresher Orb and Decrepify) of mana used as damage.
• Mage Killer: Nether Ward is a good counter against heavy casters like Skywrath Mage and Lina, easily oneshotting them.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Pugna is one of the few INT heroes better suited to carrying than supporting: his skills need levels to scale and be useful (a level 1 Life Drain does nothing if you're behind in levels), making him a bad support; meanwhile, he's the most hardcore early pusher in the game with Nether Blast, and Aghanim's Scepter, which greatly boosts the damage of Life Drain and removes its cooldown, gives him good carrying potential, as he can spam it continuously unless killed or out of mana.
• Mystical High Collar: He's the Grandmaster of Oblivion, and wears a popped collar which can be customized into various styles.
• The Napoleon: He is much smaller than most heroes, but makes up for it with his temper.
• No-Sell: Enemies affected by Decrepify also become immune to physical damage as a side-effect.
• One-Hit Kill: A Mana Flare from the Nether Ward can often be this for squishy mana-heavy heroes like Lich, Lina and especially Skywrath Mage, whose ultimate Mystic Flare costs the most mana of all abilities in the game.
• Our Liches Are Different: A wicked sorcerer-monk who somehow became undead (at what age is even less clear; his height and backstory suggests in childhood, but his voice would be absurdly deep for a child).
• Piñata Enemy: The Nether Ward has a 80 gold bounty at level 4 and is easily destroyed, so Pugna players have to place it in hard-to-spot places to avoid an early detection from the enemy. Fortunately for Pugna, the ward has a very large area of effect.
• Recursive Ammo: Aghanim's Shard allows Pugna to cast Life Drain on his Nether Ward, which splits it into multiple beams latching onto each enemy hero nearby.
• The Red Mage: Most of his abilities are used for nuking the living daylights out of the enemy, but Decrepify can be used defensively to protect against physical damage and Life Drain also serves as a powerful heal.
• Religion of Evil: Pugna and his followers seem to be practicing a twisted fantasy counterpart of Tibetan Buddhism, even with references to lamas and the concept of the grandmaster's reincarnated form being chosen among children by letting them identify the grandmaster's possessions in its previous life.
• Sickly Green Glow: The green flames burning in his ribcage as well as his abilities.
• Spam Attack: Nether Blast and Life Drain (with the latter becoming even shorter with Aghanim's Scepter) have very short cooldowns and can be spammed as long as Pugna has mana. Which thanks to his whopping 4.5 point Intelligence growth is pretty easy to obtain with mana regen, and due to Life Drain being able to return mana if he channels it for long enough.
• Squishy Wizard: The best example in the game; he has the highest Intelligence growth out of any hero (a whopping 4.5 points per level), but his Strength and Agility gains leave much to be desired (Life Drain somewhat compensates for this, especially if the enemy team doesn’t have a lot of interrupts, but if you stun him once he's probably toast).
• Vague Age: While Pugna's backstory deals with his childhood, which combined with his small stature seem to point to him being an Undead Child, he was also the master of Viper, whose backstory describes the wizard who enslaved him as old. Not helping the case is that his voice doesn't sound much like either a child or an old man.
• Would Hurt a Child: He would explode a child. While being barely a single year old. For fun. His habits probably didn't change since them.

Akasha, the Queen of Pain

"Death travels faster than sound."

Voiced by: Linda K. Morris

The kingdom of Elze was ruled by an Ecclesiast-King whose hidden lust for pain drove him to great lengths to satisfy his dark cravings. Knowing that openly pursuing masochism would be scandalous for a man of his status, the king secretly gave the demonologists held captive in his dungeons the opportunity to be freed if they could summon a succubus familiar to inflict the suffering he desired. To this end, they bound the demon Akasha to the king's service. Because her torments were so exquisite and pleasurable, the king made Akasha his Secret Queen, abdictating his royal duties to spend more and more time with her. Eventually, an angry mob, fed up with the king's neglectfulness, broke into the palace and threw him out of the Tower of Invocations to his death. With her master gone, the Queen of Pain was no longer bound to anyone, and she was now free to share the king's favorite torments with the world.

Burst damage is the name of the game for the Queen of Pain. Her first spell is Shadow Strike, which allows her to throw a poisoned dagger at a target. The dagger deals damage, while the poison inflicts a powerful slow and damage over time effect. With her Blink ability, the Queen of Pain teleports a short distance, allowing her to either flee from her enemies when outmatched or get in position to better use her next two abilities: Scream of Pain deals a large amount of magical damage to all foes in a small radius around her, while her Ultimate ability Sonic Wave deals massive pure damage in a cone-shaped area, ignoring spell immunity and knocking enemies back. With these spells, the Queen of Pain will dish out all the pain her foes can take, and then some.

In Dota Underlords, Queen of Pain is a tier 2 hero. Her ability, Scream of Pain, damages nearby foes.

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• Adaptation Species Change: In the original DotA, Akasha was a banshee who possessed the body of a demon; now she is just a demon.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Sonic Wave is one of the largest area-of-effect spells that goes through BKB, making it extremely deadly in the right hands as she can finish off targets even if they've activated spell immunity to escape. It also deals Pure damage, which means that any amount of magic resistance will not help the target(s).
• Black Mage: Three out of four of Queen of Pain's skills are nukes, giving her extremely high burst damage, and her last ability is a positioning spell that helps her get them off (and can also become a fourth nuke with Aghanim's Shard). If given fast level 6 in the mid lane, she can burst down most enemy heroes with ease when ganking the side lanes.
• Bondage Is Bad: She's a demon pulled out of hell for the purpose of fulfilling the king's S&M fantasies, and afterwards chose to inflict as much pain to as many people as possible.
• Brains and Bondage: Most of her lines are based off of BDSM, on top of her being an Intelligence hero.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Sums up her entire character. Upon respawning:
  "I'm in a world of pain. It's wonderful!"
• Chainmail Bikini: Justified, since her intended purpose was originally a sexy Dominatrix, not a warrior. Appropriately, her durability leaves much to be desired.
• Dark Action Girl: Queen of Pain can dish out loads of damage with her powerful spells, and is a pretty nasty person who thrives in the suffering of others.
• Dominatrix: Her role to the Ecclesiast-King of Elze was to inflict the pain he so desired.
• Double Entendre: Virtually her entire theme.
• Dynamic Entry: QoP's nuking power and blink ability allow her to initiate fights on her terms, and blast down enemies extremely quickly entire teams at a time. Even moreso if she gets an Aghanim's Shard, where afterwards she can begin an initiation with a silencing sonic boom at every Blink.
• Fragile Speedster: Akasha has a built-in Blink ability, which allows her to engage and escape as she pleases. But unless you build survivability on her, she's easy to kill if she's stunned at the wrong moment and focused down.
• Flash Step: Blink moves Queen of Pain over a very long distance (even more than Blink Dagger!) with only one point in the skill, and eventually reaches half of Blink Dagger's cooldown (or even shorter with the right talent) without the player-damage cooldown reset. Its only drawbacks compared to Blink Dagger are the mana cost and cast animation, as well the fact that it becomes unusable if silenced.
• Gale-Force Sound: Sonic Wave knocks enemies in its path away from Akasha, preventing them from moving in the process.
• Glass Cannon: Akasha can deal massive amounts of AoE damage, but she's easy to kill if she's stunned at the wrong moment and focused down.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: While she does have "queen" in her title, her time as the secret queen of Elze didn't have her doing too much. On the other hand, her Arcana establishes that she is some form of demon royalty, and she has the power to match.
• Great Escape: The extremely low cooldown on her Blink ability, on top of being able to slow pursuers with Shadow Strike, means that she can escape engagements that go sour fairly reliably.
• Horned Humanoid: As can be seen in her portrait, Akasha has horns. They come in various styles depending on which headpiece you have equipped on her.
• Jack of All Stats: Queen of Pain has nearly everything people want packed into 1 hero: fairly reliable slow, AoE nuke for team fights and farming, built in mobility, and an ultimate that deals massive Pure damage that pierces spell immunity. She can be played in any core position from main carry, mid to offlaner, and is nearly always a safe pick in any situation against any team. She doesn't really take over a game but can always make an impact. Picking Queen of Pain doesn't reveal anything about your strat and even if she is a late pick, she can still fit.
• Kill Streak: Queen of Pain is notable among mid heroes for being reliant on getting early kills and snowballing with them in order to be effective. She has some of the best early game harassing abilities and can get kills with her nuking abilities at a time when the enemy has few ways to counter her, and then use those kills to buy items to increase her ability to kill enemies even more. But if she fails to snowball, then she has a much harder time since it's more difficult to get kills against farmed enemies who have ways to disrupt her chain attacks, can simply become immune to her damage or simply have too much HP, on top of her not having a hard disable ability and thus being reliant on buying an Orchid or Scythe with the gold from her kills.
• Lady of Black Magic: A seductive, malicious succubus dressed in little, with a fighting style that focuses on spells which unleash powerful burst damage.
• Life Drain: Shadow Strike heals Queen of Pain every time it deals damage.
• Mage Marksman: Even though she is a burst-heavy nuker with no damage steroids skill, her right-click damage is still decent with good starting damage, faster-than-average attack speed, Intelligence growth, Blink to chase and kite and Shadow Strike to slow her targets. As a result, her item build mostly consists of Intelligence items which boost both her mana pool and right-click damage like Orchid Malevolence, Scythe of Vyse or Shiva's Guard.
• Mercy Kill: A unit under the Shadow Strike debuff can be killed by their teammates if their HP falls below 25%, denying whatever Gold and Experience she would have received from the kill.
• Ms. Fanservice: She is basically the Dota equivalent of a porn star. Of course, she gets a pass on this one due to being a succubus-like creature.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Blade Mail of all items had a brief stint as one of the most bought items on Queen of Pain, after 7.00 gave her a Level 25 talent choice to lifesteal off 70%^note since nerfed to 60% of the damage her spells and items dealt. This along with two talents that gave her extra health made it so she could blink into an engagement, reflect all the damage, then get out unscathed because the Blade Mail also healed her. As of 7.02 just under two months later, Blade Mail is now one of the few damaging items you can't spell-lifesteal from.
• Our Banshees Are Louder: In the original DotA, she was a banshee that, wishing for a physical form, possessed a succubus. Her sonic powers are all that remain of that aspect in Dota 2.
• Our Demons Are Different: The Eminence of Ristul Arcana establishes that Akasha is a Demon from the Seven Hells, same as Shadow Demon, Doom, Terrorblade, and Shadow Fiend, and is part of their aristocracy. She apparently also speaks Ozkavosh, though it's not present in her voice lines.
• Poisoned Weapons: Akasha's first ability, Shadow Strike, throws a poisoned dagger at a target enemy which deals a small amount of initial damage and damage over time afterward, on top of slowing the target for the duration of the damage. It's often considered her best harassing skill in the early game, especially in the mid lane, since the damage is applied once every 3 seconds for 15 seconds, making it hard to use Bottle for that duration to recover from the damage.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: She has red eyes, fittingly enough for a demon, and loves to make others suffer.
• Spam Attack:
  • Scream of Pain is on a constant 7 second cooldown, while Shadow Strike at its highest level can be cast every 4. With Blink on a 6 second cooldown, QoP is capable of dropping loads of damage on her enemies over extended chases. With her cooldown reduction talent on Level 15, you can take off another 12% across the board, or take off 34% if you add an Octarine Core on top.
  • Special mention goes to Sonic Wave, which is usually on a cooldown timer comparable to big teamfight ultimates. Purchasing an Aghanim's Scepter reduces its cooldown to 40 seconds (or 34 if you take the cooldown reduction at Level 15 as well), meaning that Queen of Pain can cast it on lone victims any time she finds someone, not just saving it to use on the whole enemy team during a major teamfight. It can even be used to nuke down creep waves instantly for little consequence.
• Squishy Wizard: Despite her high mobility and nuking power, Queen of Pain still has a rather mediocre Strength and Agility gain (2 each per level), and very little base armor (1.6 armor at Level 1). If she doesn't kill her targets in the first few seconds or tries to engage more than one target at a time, she can be disabled and put down very easily.
• Stripperiffic: A bra, a thong and pauldrons; that's it. Legion Commander actually calls her out on it.
  Legion Commander: (meeting Queen of Pain) You came to a battle wearing that?!
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: One of Queen of Pain's level 25 talents causes Scream of Pain to force targets to run away in fear to their fountain for 1.5 seconds.
• Super-Scream: Scream of Pain and Sonic Wave are super-powerful screams which deal high amounts of damage to foes caught in the sound wave.
• Teleport Spam: Alongside Anti-Mage, QoP's Blink gives her a huge amount of initiation or escape capability, being able to chase with ease or escape determined ganks.
• Torture Technician: Both in her backstory and the lores for Shadow Strike and Sonic Wave.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Sonic Wave is a gigantic wave of sound that deals heavy damage to all enemy units in its wake.
• Weaksauce Weakness: One of Akasha's greatest weaknesses is that virtually all of her damage is magical, so she loses a lot of her killing potential once her target activates debuff immunity. As such, she's often used to pick off lone enemies who don't have a Black King Bar (or can't afford to use it in a single skirmish), or builds a Scythe of Vyse in order to prevent her target from even using their items.
• Whip of Dominance: She's a sadistic demonic dominatrix, normally favors throwing knives as a weapon, but when equipped with the Eminence of Ristul, she gains a whip which she uses to attack at a short range.
• Winged Humanoid: She has wings, which look similar to a bat's by default, but can be customized into many styles.
• Wings Do Nothing: Though they might be at least symbolic, as in they represent Akasha's ability to move swiftly with her Blink.

Rubick, the Grand Magus

"There are none who cannot be mimicked."

Voiced by: Barry Dennen (original), Darin De Paul (Underlords)

Rubick, a famous wizard and duelist, had a strange problem. He would frequently be targeted by assassins, but their attempts were so simple, so boring. Tired of the feeble foes who were always trying to kill him, Rubick thought of a way to increase the challenge: declaring he would make himself a Magus. The title of Magus was reserved only for the mightiest and most talented sorcerers, so the only way to become a Magus was by slaying an existing one in battle. But to threaten one Magus is to threaten all of them, and every existing Magus united in an effort to defend their brethren from Rubick's threat. Facing all the world's greatest wizards at once, Rubick once again found joy in combat, as each Magus posed a formidable challenge. But Rubick had the upper hand, as he applied his unique talents to turn his foes' sorceries against them. As the Magi identified the spells that killed their allies as belonging to each other, distrust quickly spread among them, and their efforts to kill Rubick instead turned against themselves. After the fighting ceased, Rubick was unanimously granted the title of Grand Magus by the Insubstantial Eleven on the Hidden Council, who saw no reason to argue with his petition.

Rubick is a hero, generally played as a support due to his low damage, who possesses the unique ability to turn his foes' most powerful attacks against them. His first ability Telekinesis, lifts the target enemy helplessly into the air, after which Rubick can slam them down at a location of his choosing, stunning the target and any enemies near the landing point. Similarly, Fade Bolt has Rubick launch a coil of energy at an enemy, damaging them and reducing their attack damage before bouncing to another nearby enemy. There is no upper limit on how many times the bolt can bounce, but it only lasts for so long and each bounce causes it to deal less damage. Rubick's Arcane Supremacy puts him head and shoulders above most mages, greatly increasing his spell damage and causing debuffs from his spells to last much longer. Most of Rubick's kit is fairly plain and not flashy, but his true claim to fame lies in his incredibly versatile ultimate, Spell Steal. With it, Rubick studies an enemy, gaining the ability to use their most recently used spell for upwards of several minutes at its current level. This includes ultimates, making Rubick an incredibly dangerous foe to teams with powerful initiators or those with extremely important spells such as Doom's Doom and Enigma's Black Hole.

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• The Archmage: They don't call him Grand Magus for nothing. He is so talented at magic that he can imitate almost any spell.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: The only explanation for his ability to copy even physical feats such as a Ground Pound or Spin Attack.
• Badass Long Robe: Rubick wears a lengthy wizard robe, and of course you have to be a badass to participate in the War of the Ancients.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Despite his spastic motions and insatiable curiosity, Rubick is a wizard able to instantaneously analyze any spell and perform it perfectly.
• Black Mage: His default abilities are offensive in nature: Telekinesis holds a foe in place, stunning them and other enemies when they land, Fade Bolt sends out a wave of energy that damages enemies and weakens their attacks, and Arcane Supremacy increases the power of his spells.
• Blood Knight: His backstory says he actually enjoys the attempts on his life.
• Boom Stick: Rubick uses his staff as if it was a gun with some stolen spells (most notably Sniper's Assassinate). At other times it might be used as a stick horse.
• Calling Your Attacks: Often says the name of the spell he stole or cast, especially in case of game-changing ultimates such as Chronosphere and Black Hole.
• Cane Fu: He uses his Magic Staff both primarily as a walking stick and for casting spells, though he is most definitely capable of simply smacking people with it when he steals a spell like Blade Fury or Culling Blade.
• Challenge Seeker: He seems more driven by his curiosity and the promise of challenge than the actual battle or its outcome.
  Rubick: "First Blood? What is this? I came here to be tested!"
• Confusion Fu:
  • Trying to remember what skill Rubick stole can be confusing, to say nothing of when he steals spells mid-fight. This isn't made any easier by the removal of the useful indicator in the original DotA that told everyone what he managed to steal.
  • Rubick himself does this. The reasons he "forgets" stolen spells after a set duration is because... he forgets to write them down.
  Rubick (forgetting a spell) : "How forgetful of me."
• Continuity Nod: As in the original DotA, Aghanim is Rubick's father.
  Rubick (buying Aghanim's Specter): "Father's Masterpiece."
• Cool Mask: Rubick is a powerful magician, and he wears a mask which covers his whole face.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Rubick actually gets harder to play as you get better, since you can steal a spell from a hero that you already know how to play, and then press the key for the spell you stole to cast it, instead of "D". It gets even worse when you get Aghanim's Scepter (which allows you to steal two spells at once), as the same spell can - in the same game - keep changing between being assigned to "D" or "F".
• Difficult, but Awesome: Because of Spell Steal, Rubick gameplay requires at least basic knowledge of what every other hero's spells do, to say nothing of the proper situation to use them. Good Rubick players, however, need to be able to recognize what actually is worthwhile to steal, what hero will consistently give a good spell to use, and when that hero will actually cast that spell. Many hero spells are meant to be used in tandem with others on that hero, and many spells often times work better with Rubick than on the original owner. A Rubick that steals, say, Windrun from Windranger won't get much mileage out of it, but if he manages to grab Shackleshot then he can easily setup a 2-hero shackle with Telekinesis. Experienced Rubicks can easily grab whatever spell is needed right in the midst of combat, resulting in crazy situations like blinking right into an enemy crowd, rapidly stealing something like Earthshaker's Echo Slam or Enigma's Black Hole, and initiating with the stolen spell, all within the span of a few seconds. This gets even more absurd if he can manage to build an Aghanim's Scepter, since he'll be able to steal an enemy spell every two seconds, meaning that he can steal multiple ultimates during a teamfight, and cast them as long as his mana pool is big enough.
• Discard and Draw: Whenever Rubick uses Spell Steal, he automatically forgets the currently stolen spell. If he has Aghanim's Scepter (which allows him to remember two stolen spells), stealing a new ability replaces the older ability.
• Dynamic Entry: With Aghanim's Shard, Rubick can cast Telekinesis on himself or an ally. When used this way, the throw range is increased, allowing Rubick's teammates to initiate from a longer distance.
• Emerald Power: Rubick is strongly associated with the color green: he has glowing green eyes, appears to have green skin, has green gems all over his armor, a green blob on top of his staff, and his own spells have green particle effects, and the Magus Cypher arcana can turn certain stolen spell effects green too.
• Face Framed in Shadow: Some of his cosmetic items, such as the Hood of the Cruel Magician, are hoods which hide his face in darkness, showing only his green glowing eyes.
• The Faceless: His face is always concealed, either under a mask or hood.
• Face Palm: Rubick used to do an animation like this when he used Night Stalker's Darkness (since replaced with Dark Ascension), whose only effect was turning day to night, something that only benefited Night Stalker due to his passive Hunter in the Night.
• Flying Broomstick: He rides his staff like one when casting Batrider's Firefly.
• Foil: To Invoker, both are arguably the most generic "Mage" type heroes, with no additional theme. Rubick dresses in black and green, Invoker wears white and gold. Rubick's a Nice Guy, while Invoker's practically a walking mass of ego. Rubick is very adaptable and a quick learner, but is also rather forgetful. Invoker meanwhile only uses the 10 spells he has, seeing everything else as beneath him but isn't all that bright, relying solely on his memory.
• Glowing Eyes: Rubick's eyes glow green, which helps with the whole "Grand Magus" look he's going for.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Telekinesis lifts the target up for a certain amount of time, and then drops them at a point of Rubick's choosing, stunning any enemies in the area. It's also possible to put people on the cliffs next to the runes, rendering them helpless unless they have an ability or item that allows them to displace themselves or remove their collision (such as Force Staff, a TP scroll, a Blink Dagger, or a mobility skill). Oh, and his version of Walrus Punch fires off a clone of him to punch the target.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Rubick's Spell Steal seeks to do this against his enemies.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Zigzagged with Spell Steal:
  • Since Arcane Supremacy amplifies spell damage and cast range, and Spell Steal amplifies debuff duration, Rubick's stolen spells can be cast from farther, deal more damage and inflict debuffs that last longer than when used by the original owner. He also uses his default casting animation when casting a spell that does not require channelling or an extended preparation time. Abilities stolen from heroes with a long cast point (like Jakiro's Ice Path or Leshrac's Split Earth) can thus all be cast within 0.1 seconds, making them superior on Rubick than on their owner. He also has two talents that improve stolen spells (-25% cooldown at level 15 and +40% damage at level 25, the latter of which is superior to any other hero's spell amplification talents).
  • On the other hand, there are certain abilities which are nearly useless on Rubick because he cannot steal passive abilities, or lacks the stats or items of the original owner to benefit from them, like Tidehunter's Anchor Smash, Meepo's Poof, Troll Warlord's Berserker's Rage,... In addition, while Rubick has Arcane Supremacy and his own talents to improve the stolen spells, stolen spells never benefit from the original owner's talents, so Rubick can never stun enemies with Tether or Dissimilate, fire triple Sacred Arrows, nor dispel himself or stun enemies with Meld for example.
  • When it comes to Aghanim's Scepter and Shard upgrades, Rubick will cast the upgraded version if and only if he has Scepter or Shard, without taking into account if the enemy also has it; so if the enemy has Scepter or Shard and he doesn't, the version cast by Rubick will be weaker and vice versa. Note that this does not apply to skills that are unlocked by Shard and Scepter; Rubick can steal them regardless of whether he has his own Shard and/or Scepter or not. That being said, Scepter is very much a luxury item for him: being a support, accumulating 4200 gold isn't easy, and there are usually more important items for Rubick to buy (most importantly Blink Dagger and/or Force Staff) before he can afford a Scepter for himself.
• Insistent Terminology
  Rubick: "I am no thief. I merely borrow."
• In the Hood: The Garb of the Cruel Magician cosmetic set replaces Rubick's mask with a hood.
• It Amused Me: The Flavor Text of Telekinesis implies that he occasionally uses it to amuse himself. You can also invoke this by dropping enemies on cliffs; if you manage to do so, it's insta lulz for your team.
• Jack of All Stats: Rubick can fit in any lineup, as his skillset is incredibly flexible. Telekinesis is a single target stun which can then be used as areal stun or a repositioning spell - perfect to combo with other single or areal stun or a positioning-dependent skill. Fade Bolt is a Chain Lightning type spell with debuff component, so it can be immediately be followed up with other single target nuke to capitalize on its damage or other areal nuke to capitalize on its AoE capacity. And finally, anything the enemy can use against you, Spell Steal can use it back against them. Technically speaking, there's a certain team composition relying on mostly physical damagers and passives that would render Spell Steal useless, but if the enemy actually uses this lineup, the game might as well be won.
• Like Father, Like Son: He, like his father Aghanim, has great magic powers.
• Magic Staff: A bubbling, green, plasma-like substance emanates from the top of his staff, and he can use it to cast magic, such as the magic bolt of his basic attack, Fade Bolt, and many of the spells he can copy with Spell Steal.
• Marionette Motion: He's moving non-stop in a very unusual way.
• Master of None: Despite Rubick's flexibility, his stat growth is complete arse, so he can't spam spells for shit. In addition, his spells in general are very weak compared to the equivalents of other supports (Telekinesis deals no damage and has a long cooldown and short range, and Fade Bolt deals less damage compared to other chain-lightning type spells. Without Aghanim's Scepter, he gets to steal one spell during a teamfight, and can cast it only once if it's a good spell with long cooldown. Anyone who plays Rubick will notice how little impact you have unless the enemy has good spells.
• Mind over Matter: Telekinesis lifts an enemy hero into the air, rendering them helpless, before dropping them on the ground, stunning nearby foes.
• Morphic Resonance: Any transformation spell he steals will always result in a smaller, green-colored model compared to the original, making them easily distinguishable.
• Pinball Projectile: Fade Bolt has the unique distinction of having no chaining limit (the only other such skill is Lich's upgraded Chain Frost), its only restriction being that it can only hit each target once per cast. It also loses a bit of damage on each bounce, meaning that it will theoretically end up dealing no damage after a certain number of bounces.
• Power Copying: His ultimate, Spell Steal, grants Rubick the last ability that an enemy used for a few minutes. It's slightly limited in that he can't steal passive abilities that do not have an active component (and thus cannot be activated).
• Power Glows: He appears to glow from under his robes.
• Punny Name
  Rubick: "Now where's my cube?"
  • Given a nod by the Immortal item Staff of Perplex, which is tipped with a puzzle that bears more than a passing resemblance to a Rubik's Cube.
• Required Secondary Powers: Since Rubick is an Intelligence hero with weak stats all around, tends to build support items instead of durability or damage items, cannot steal passive abilities or keep them forever, and needs Aghanim's Scepter to keep two stolen abilities at the same time, certain skills are nearly useless to him. Multishot barely scratches enemy heroes when your right-click damage is almost nonexistent, Poof is very weak without multiple Meepo clones using it all at the same time, Summon Spirit Bear cannot act as a carrying steroids if the bear will disappear and drop all of its items as soon as Rubick steals another ability, Take Aim's active component does nothing without Headshot, Purifying Flames is much less useful when you don't have easy access to Fortune's End and Fate's Edict, for example.
• The Rival: He's somewhat of a Foil to Invoker, and he has several lines mocking him. They're also foils in ability; both require memorization of abilities and have enormous versatility.
• Running on All Fours: When he stole Charge of Darkness or Shapeshift (although the latter can be excused since he's now in wolf form).
• Schmuck Bait: You better be very careful approaching a Rubick who's loitering next to cliffs, as he might be baiting to drop you on the cliff and render you helpless.
• Simple, yet Awesome:
  • Telekinesis deals no damage and has a hideously long cooldown for a non-ultimate stun. Yet it is considered an incredibly powerful disable for 3 reasons: it is cast instantly, it hits instantly, and its repositioning effect can absolutely ruin an enemy hero's day in the right situations.
  • Rubick's cast animation itself is this, as it allows him to cast most spells faster than the original owners. While Terrorblade can Sunder a target in 0.35 seconds, Rubick can do so in 0.1.
• Simplified Spellcasting: His truly distinguishing feature is that he casts spells near-instantly, including stolen spells.
• Some Dexterity Required:
  • By himself, managing all of your spells and positioning yourself can be quite tricky, especially if you tend to steal spells on the fly and use them as needed (particularly for blinking spells). However, getting an Aghanim's Scepter cranks this up, since you won't be limited by the cooldown of Spell Steal anymore.
  • The mechanics of Spell Steal (namely, only being able to steal the last spell cast by the target) mean that Rubick has another degree of this compared to most heroes: being faster than your opponent. Any initiator worth their salt will immediately cast another ability after their ultimate just to prevent Rubick from stealing it, so a split second is often the difference between nabbing a potentially game-winning spell like Ravage or simply grabbing something useless like Anchor Smash.
• Squishy Wizard: Like most other Intelligence supports, Rubick suffers from low to mediocre base Strength and gain, on top of pitiful base armor and Agility gain, meaning that he's incapable of surviving if focused on. For this reason, he's largely played as a counter-initiator with his ultimate rather than the first guy who jumps into a teamfight. Can be subverted if Rubick manages to steal Morphling's Attribute Shift, and convert his Agility into Strength. The result is a Rubick who is even squishier against physical attacks, but has a loads more of health to compensate.
• Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Rubick's idea of acquiring the title of Grand Magus was to challenge one to a duel.
• Troll: While Valve has gone out of their way to patch this out as much as possible, it's possible to use Telekinesis to lift enemies and then drop them onto elevated areas that cannot otherwise be reached without blinking or using a Force Staff or jumping abilities, essentially trapping enemy players if they have no way to displace themselves. The most notable areas to do this are two or three small spots on the cliffs near Roshan, since players will never buy TP scrolls among their starting items and the courier can't be upgraded until three minutes into the game. This means that unless you kill them, they'll likely be stuck in place until someone upgrades the courier and they buy a TP scroll, all the while everybody else is laning and gaining levels. Managing to do this during a teamfight is an incredible boon to your team, especially if you managed to get their melee carry.
• Victory Is Boring: The reason why he decided to become a magus? He got bored of the constant attempts on his life.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: If he steals such an ability. It's even possible to stack several shape changes at once and get all of the benefits (as well as downsides).
• Weak, but Skilled: Rubick has mediocre stats all across the board—despite being called the Grand Magus, he has the 3rd lowest Intelligence growth amongst Intelligence heroes; and both his Strength and Agility are unremarkable as well. He makes up for this with the supreme versatility and unpredictability of Spell Steal: by stealing the right abilities, Rubick can aid himself and allies by casting crippling disables, applying curses, unleashing powerful nukes, disorienting the enemy team, supporting his allies with buffs, escaping from rough situations, or even enhancing his own physical attacks.
• What the Hell, Player?: He isn't happy if you botch a stolen Meat Hook.
  "You idiot! Ugh!"
• Wizard Classic: Badass Longrobe? Check. Magic Staff? Check.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Telekinesis can be used to forcibly pull an enemy to your team. The range is not very far, but it's very useful to disrupt positioning, or forcibly reposition an enemy on the wrong side of a ledge.

Shadow Demon

"The Second Domination draws near."

Voiced by: Nolan North

The Shadow Demon was the only demon among his peers to show a strong interest in the material plane, which he believed held the key to conquering all existence. Using his power to fulfill the requests of those who summoned him, he gradually amassed a large following of kings, demonologists, wizards, and priests, all of whom mistakenly believed they were his master - in truth, it was the other way around, and the Shadow Demon turned them all into mindless slaves. However, his vast influence eventually caught the attention of Doom and Shadow Fiend when the latter discovered a soul he was eating held little more than Shadow Demon's essence. Realizing that the balance of the Umbral Pact was threatened, Doom and Shadow Fiend were forced to cooperate to destroy Shadow Demon and his cult, obliterating him and his centuries of work. However, a tiny fragment of Shadow Demon's power survived, and over several centuries, it gradually reformed his body. With his strength renewed, Shadow Demon has formulated a new plan for world domination, this time without the flaws of his previous attempt.

The Shadow Demon uses powerful spells to disrupt his foes, making him a great support hero. Disruption places a unit, friend or foe, inside a sphere of darkness, disabling them but also making them invulnerable for a period of time. Once this effect ends, two illusions of the target are summoned under Shadow Demon's control. This spell is very versatile, as it can be used to remove an enemy from the fight, or keep an ally alive by shielding them from harm, and the illusions can multiply a friend's power or turn a foe's against them. Soul Catcher curses all enemies in an area, instantly removing a portion of their current health. Half of the damage dealt by this effect is returned after a short time. Shadow Poison sends forth a wave of darkness which inflicts a stacking curse on all enemies hit. Once the curse's duration ends, or Shadow Demon uses Shadow Poison Release, the victims take heavy damage, which is multiplied by the number of stacks, potentially dealing massive damage. Finally, the Shadow Demon's ultimate ability, Demonic Purge, removes buffs from an enemy while heavily slowing them. The target's speed is gradually restored over the duration, and once the effect ends, the target takes great magical damage. These abilities allow the Shadow Demon to maintain a constant influence over the tide of battle, should one learn to master his powerful spells.

In Dota Underlords, Shadow Demon is a tier 1 hero. His ability is Demonic Purge, which slows, Breaks, and dispels positive buffs from an enemy, dealing damage once the effect wears off.

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• Assimilation Plot: Shadow Demon eroded the identities of all of his followers and made their mind his own.
• Casting a Shadow: Shadow Poison deals a small amount of damage to any target in its path, then places a stacking debuff on the target. After a certain amount of time (or at Shadow Demon's command), the target takes additional damage based on how many times they were hit with Shadow Poison, with the damage increasing exponentially with the number of stacks.
• Chained by Fashion: Shadow Demon wears them on his chest, likely signifying his (false) servitude to the summoners who thought they were his master.
• Combination Attack: Disruption is one of the best skills to help teammates land spells with long cast times or delays. Examples include skills such as Torrent, Sacred Arrow, Light Strike Array and even Sun Strike or Slithereen Crush. When combined with Disseminate, this makes for a powerful ganking combination.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Disseminate causes enemies standing near the target, including the target itself (if an enemy), to take a percentage of all damage taken by the target.
• Dark Is Evil: Has a dark, purple and red color scheme, uses shadow-based abilities like Shadow Poison, and is so evil that even Shadow Fiend and Doom (the latter of whom is literally Satan) decided to form an Enemy Mine alliance to stop him.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: While Shadow Poison deals very little damage per tick, the total damage from five stacks can reach 320 right from level 1.
• Defog of War: Shadow Poison briefly reveals the area it passes through, so it's often used to scout important areas like narrow paths, high grounds or the Roshan pit.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Disruption is infamous as one of the most misused skills in pubs, often used indiscriminately by bad Shadow Demon players and more frequently saving the enemy than accomplishing the skill's purpose, which is buying time and setting up for teammates to land other Difficult, but Awesome skills - something that only good players that coordinate with their teammates can do.
  • Shadow Demon can stack the entire jungle at once through careful timing and use of Disruption and Shadow Poison. Despite the dexterity required to pull it off, it can dramatically boost your carry's farm if done consistently.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Back in the original DotA, Shadow Demon was an Eredar named... "Eredar".
• Evil Overlord: Seeks to dominate the universe, and almost succeeded once.
• Evil Versus Evil: His actions forced Doom and Shadow Fiend to join forces and fight him.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Other demons, heroes and otherwise, are not particularly fond of him due to the stunt he pulled in his backstory.
• From a Single Cell: According to his backstory, he's been almost destroyed before.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: His glowing yellow eyes give him a demonic look.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Played straight with Disruption and Disseminate, making them one of the few inversions of how the trope is presented in Dota. Since the former creates two illusions of a hero and the latter amplifies damage taken by a percentage, they only get stronger and stronger alongside the teams' carries as the game progresses.
• Locked Out of the Fight: A unit affected by Disruption can do nothing but becomes invulnerable for its duration except against Disseminate, Shadow Poison and Demonic Purge.
• Manipulative Bastard: Although not reflected in his gameplay, Shadow Demon fooled his summoners and everyone he was placed in the service of, allowing him to gain control over a massive cult.
• Monochromatic Eyes: Has solid yellow eyes.
• Multiversal Conqueror: Shadow Demon wants to conquer all realities, and believes that the material plane is the best place to start.
• Never Given a Name: He is only known as the Shadow Demon, and it's unclear if he actually has a name or not.
• Our Demons Are Different: In Dota 2, demons originate from the Seven Hells and speak Ozkavosh. Between his fellow demonic heroes, Doom and Shadow Fiend, Shadow Demon resembles the former more closely, having a bipedal body with a tail and hoof-like feet. However, he lacks Doom's wings and has a Skull for a Head.
• Pocket Dimension: Disruption banishes any hero from the battlefield for 2 seconds. The ability is often used for disabling an enemy, giving your team 2 seconds to surround them, or can be used on an ally or yourself to effectively dodge any damage that you would have otherwise taken in those two seconds.
• Poisonous Person: Shadow Poison.
• Power Nullifier: With Aghanim's Scepter, Demonic Purge disables the target's passive abilities while active, making it very effective at shutting down enemy carries.
• Purple Is the New Black: Although the "Shadow" part of his name implies darkness, his abilities have a reddish-purple glow to them.
• The Red Mage: While Shadow Demon is a mostly offensive caster, he can use Disruption to save allies and Demonic Cleanse to remove debuffs and heal them.
• Religion of Evil: Shadow Demon formed a cult in the past as part of his plan to Take Over the World, attracting followers by granting their wishes and slowly hypnotizing them into becoming his slaves.
• Skull for a Head: As can be seen in his portrait, Shadow Demon's head looks like a skull, implicitly because he still hasn't fully recovered from the smackdown that Doom and Shadow Fiend gave him.
• Spam Attack: Shadow Poison, with its short cooldown, low mana cost and stacking effect.
• Squishy Wizard: In addition to being a squishy Intelligence support, Shadow Demon rarely has the money to afford durability items.
• Status-Buff Dispel: Demonic Purge constantly removes all positive buffs from an enemy and severely slows the target for several seconds, then deals a large amount of damage, while Demonic Cleanse does the reverse thing on allies. The buff removal and slow even go through spell immunity, making Demonic Purge an extremely useful tool for shutting down melee carries who have just activated their Black King Bars and are bearing down, and rendering buffs such as Bloodlust or Guardian Angel useless.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: In the early game where enemies have less HP, the fact that Shadow Poison's damage increases exponentially as you inflict more and more stacks can take players by surprise. Against a squishy target, you can easily take off more than half their health in an instant — and since the damage is applied all at once once the stacks expire or Shadow Poison Release is used, less-experienced players would look at their health bar, think that they're still in a safe range, and not run away, letting you stack even more poison on them or whittle them down to the point where the burst damage will be lethal.
• Synchronization: Dissimilate causes a fraction of damage taken by the target, friend or foe, to also be felt by enemies around them.
• Take Over the World: His aspiration is to take over the mortal realm by enslaving followers, and actually made some pretty good progress before Doom and Shadow Fiend put an end to it.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: In Shadow Demon's backstory, when Nevermore collected a nasty-tasting soul only to discover that it held nothing but part of Shadow Demon's foul essence.
• Twin Maker: Disruption creates two illusions of its target once its duration ends, and can both make the enemy fight two of their own carry and give your own carry a free Manta Style.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: By default Shadow Demon doesn't wear a shirt and neither does he have a shirt slot for cosmetic items.
• Why Am I Ticking?: Played with. While Shadow Poison and Demonic Purge do not affect the surrounding targets, they still turn the enemies into living bombs activated by timer running out - or manually.
• You Are Already Dead: Shadow Poison does little immediate damage, but it also deals a burst of damage after a delay. The catch is that Shadow Poison can be stacked on enemies to double the delayed damage up to four times, threatening a huge amount of damage, and dispelling the debuff doesn't help as this will cause the burst damage to happen immediately. Careless players that get tagged with Shadow Poison several times might get away from Shadow Demon almost unscathed and think themselves safe... only to spontaneously implode several seconds later.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The lore of Demonic Purge:
  Once Shadow Demon no longer has any need for his collected cultist, he releases it from its subservience - and its life.

Rhasta, the Shadow Shaman

"I am the intermediary between life and death."

Voiced by: Gary Schwartz (original), Jason Spisak (Underlords)

Abandoned in the Bleeding Hills until he was found by a travelling con-man, the half-troll Rhasta spent his youth as his master's assistant. Together, Rhasta and his master would go from village to village pretending to be magicians and performing fake rituals for customers before fleeing to the next town. However, the con-man eventually realized that Rhasta possessed actual magical ability, which he put to use by having the youngling perform magic shows under the stage name of Shadow Shaman. However, the duo's past infamy caught up with them, and they were attacked by an angry mob of swindled and cheated townspeople. The con-man was killed, and Rhasta was forced to use his powers for harm. After defeating his attackers, Rhasta buried his master and set off on his own, now using his powers simply whenever he needs them.

Shadow Shaman is a hero generally played in the support role, as his powerful spells mean he does not need many items to be effective. Indeed, his arsenal of hexes and charms make him a devastating disabler, nuker, and pusher all in one. With his Ether Shock, the Shadow Shaman zaps several foes with lightning, dealing damage to multiple foes in a cone-shaped area. He can also render his foes helpless by casting Hex on them; this spell transforms the target into a small critter that is unable to attack, cast spells, or use items. His third spell, Shackles, is a very long-lasting stun that is most effective when other allies are nearby: Rhasta must channel to maintain the disable on the target, rendering both him and his victim unable to act for the duration. Finally, his powerful ultimate ability is Mass Serpent Wards. This spell summons a multitude of snakes which can attack foes and buildings alike, blasting them with powerful projectiles that inflict splash damage. Due to its ability to affect buildings, Mass Serpent Wards allows Shadow Shaman to rapidly tear down towers and barracks. All of these spells put together make the Shadow Shaman a versatile and powerful hero who can contribute greatly to both teamfights and pushes.

In Dota Underlords, Shadow Shaman is a tier 1 hero. His ability, Hex, turns an enemy into a chicken, preventing it from attacking or its ability.

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• Adaptation Name Change: His second skill used to be called Voodoo in DotA before being renamed Hex.
• Adaptation Species Change: Was a troll in DotA, now he's just a half-troll.
• Alliterative Name: His title, "Shadow Shaman".
• Anti-Escape Mechanism: Between Hex, Shackles, and Mass Serpent Ward, Shadow Shaman excels at locking down single targets.
• Anti-Structure: Like any summoning ability in the game, Mass Serpent Ward can devastate towers during a push, which is not helped by how wards have a lower targeting priority for towers than other units. Even if the tower starts focusing on them, it takes a good while for the single-shot tower to put all of them down.
• Barrier Warrior: The Mass Serpent Wards are placed such that there is an empty spot in the middle of them. This is specifically designed such that, if you're good enough, you can drop the wards right on top of an enemy hero, which without a source of escape ability or phase, can box them in and render them helpless while the snakes blast at them. Shadow Shaman even has specific voice lines when he accomplishes this.
• Black Mage: Shadow Shaman is one of the very few heroes in the game with more than one hard disable, and he can deal good damage with his other two spells as well.
• Con Man: In his lore, Shadow Shaman worked for a travelling con-man who would tell people's fortunes and places curses on their enemies, then flee to the next town before they caught on. Eventually, an angry mob cornered them, leading to the con-man's death and Rhasta developing powers used for killing.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Rhasta's called the Shadow Shaman and is a creepy-looking troll creature, but seems to be a fairly nice guy.
• Dual Wielding: Uses two wands.
• Forced Transformation: He can turn enemies into chickens with his Hex skill. The Immortal wand, Lamb to the Slaughter, replaces the animal with a sheep instead.
• Glass Cannon: Mass Serpent Ward is one of the most powerful pushing and teamfighting skills in the game, able to burst down heroes, towers and Roshan alike with their massive damage output. Combined with Ether Shock, Shadow Shaman has great damage output in the mid-game, but he has one of the worst strength and movement speeds in the game, making him extremely easy to focus down and kill.
• Magic Wand: He carries two small wands with which he throws energy bolts and casts his various spells.
• Monochromatic Eyes: His eyes are completely white.
• Multishot: Aghanim's Scepter causes the Serpent Wards to attack two units at once for full damage. Even without this, individual wards can fire at different targets than others, though this is more often a problem—you're dividing the overall damage. Unobservant Shamans can end up not getting their wards properly focused on a hero if there are a lot of creeps around, and end up allowing them to escape.
• Mundane Utility: He first used his supernatural abilities to entertain people, but he later weaponized them after his master was killed.
• Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: Part hill troll, part something else.
• Overly-Long Tongue: The Lash of the Lizard Kin gives Rhasta the tongue of a chameleon, which is long enough for him to cast Shackles with it (by enveloping his tongue around the target).
• Piñata Enemy: As dangerous as Shadow Shaman's Mass Serpent Ward ability is, the wards are only dangerous at relatively close range, against a limited number of enemies, and give decent gold when destroyed. Enemies with good attack speed and range like Sniper, Drow Ranger or Medusa can wipe out the wards pretty quickly while not being in range of more than two or three at a time, if at all.
• Shock and Awe: Ether Shock and Shackles use some kind of magical electricity.
• Squishy Wizard: His squishiness and lack of any escape mechanism is compounded by one of the slowest movement speeds in the game, meaning that he can melt very easily under fire.
• Status Infliction Attack: Shadow Shaman is notable for having two hard disables (Hex and Shackles), while most other heroes in the game do not or have only one reliable disable, making him one of the best roaming supports in the game.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Do not assume Shadow Shaman is an easy kill on his lonesome. Rushing him down solo without a plan is a good way to get Hexed and then held down by shackles while you get blasted apart by his serpent wards.
• The Turret Master: Shackles (when upgraded with Aghanim's Shard) and Mass Serpent Ward summon four and ten Serpent Wards (respectively), which act like ranged turrets. When focused on one target, be it a hero or a building or anything else, they can deal large amounts of damage.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: His Ether Shock and Shackles use yellow lightning, the only spells in the game to do so.

Nortrom, the Silencer

"A hush falls on the battlefield."

Voiced by: Michael Gregory

For two hundred years, the order of Aeol Drias had carefully cultivated a lineage that would result in the birth of the most powerful magician to have ever walked the earth, one who would end the conflict between them and their sworn enemies, the Knights of the Fold. With Nortrom's birth, this plan was about to succeed, and all that was left was to wait for his amazing magical abilities to develop. But as his training in the Hazhadal Barrens progressed, Nortrom appeared unable to use any kind of spell. When the day of his final test arrived, Nortrom ignored the taunts and laughter of his peers as he prepared to face them in magical combat. Although his opponents were all masters of the magical arts, Nortrom finally revealed to them that he had his own brand of sorcery. The opposition found itself silenced, unable to pronounce their magical incantations and left at the mercy of the Silencer, who emerged victious above all his fellow mages. The Aeol Drias prophecy was true.

Silencer is an unorthodox mage who punishes the use of magic. A unique ability of Nortrom's is that whenever an enemy dies in his presence, two points of intelligence are stolen from them. This allows Silencer to snowball should he play as a carry and earn a lot of kills, but his spells are powerful on their own and he can be put in a support position as well. Arcane Curse is an incantation which affects enemies in the targeted area: all targets are slowed and take damage over time, and if an affected foe uses a spell, the duration is increased. This forces enemies to make a choice: do they wait out the duration of the curse, or do they use their spells and suffer the increased damage over time and slow? Silencer's next ability, Glaives of Wisdom, is part of what makes him such a menace in the carry position: this auto-cast ability causes Silencer's attacks to deal additional pure damage based on a portion of his intelligence, while also temporarily stealing Intelligence from enemy heroes struck. Considering how he can permanently steal the intelligence of his foes, this ability can seriously boost his attack damage should he earn enough kills. Last Word places a curse on the target that, after a delay, silences the target and inflicts heavy magic damage based on the difference between Silencer's Intelligence and theirs. However, if the target uses a spell, the delay ends immediately. Finally, Silencer can turn the tide of battle from anywhere on the map with his ultimate ability, Global Silence. As its name implies, this ability instantly silences all enemies on the map for several seconds, which gives the Silencer and his team a powerful advantage against enemies who rely on abilities in combat.

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• Achilles' Heel: Glaives of Wisdom does not bypass debuff immunity, allowing the enemy team to render Silencer's right-click attacks mostly useless by building Black King Bar. For this reason, it is risky to run him as a position 1 carry, though if he gets farmed enough, the magic damage from the glaives can be quite painful regardless.
• Adaptation Species Change: Was a Blood Elf in DotA, but now just a human in Dota 2.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Nortrom suffered much ridicule from his peers for his lack of magic. They quickly changed their tune when he proved that lack of magic was his magic.
• Anti-Magic: His "magic" spells revolve around nullifying other people's magical abilities.
• Arch-Enemy: According to his backstory, Nortrom's Aeol Drias has long been in conflict with Chen's Knights of the Fold. However, neither of them have voice lines that indicate any of this.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Global Silence has an interesting interaction with spell immunity. It can actually silence units through spell immunity, invulnerability, and invisibility, meaning that it will be applied to all enemies no matter what. However, it is a dispellable debuff, meaning that activating BKB, Lotus Orb, Guardian Greaves or Manta Style after Global Silence has been cast (since almost all other forms of spell immunity and purge are ability-based, they will be disabled by Global Silence) will remove the debuff and allow you to cast.
• Big "SHUT UP!": The cast sound for Global Silence is Silencer shouting "SILENCE!"
• Black Mage: None of Silencer's spells are defensive in nature.
• Boring, but Practical: Silencer's ultimate is not flashy, has no cool particle effects, deals zero damage and does Exactly What It Says on the Tin; it silences every enemy hero, preventing them from casting spells for 6 seconds. It is considered far and away one of the best teamfight ultimates in the game. One button press and you cancel a Black Hole or Death Ward, prevent a Ravage or Primal Split. The fact that it's global means Silencer can screw up enemy combos without having to pay a lot of attention to positioning. Just the threat of Global Silence can really put a team at a disadvantage, and force them to play in less than ideal circumstances.
• Brought Down to Normal: In his backstory, he defeated every single rival student by depriving them of their magical powers before beating them up. In the game, he can silence the opponent, nullifying active abilities.
• Calling Your Attacks: A variation: the sound effects for Arcane Curse and Global Silence are distorted versions of his voice lines.
• The Chosen One: He's prophesized to be the champion of his group, but everyone thought the call chose a wrong person when he didn't show magic affinity. Only when he revealed that silence is magic too that they realized that the call was right.
• Cool Helmet: Tall and pointy, in purple and gold. It can also be customized in even cooler styles.
• Evil Laugh: The sound effect for Last Word is a creepy, distorted version of Silencer's laugh.
• Fixed Damage Attack: Glaives of Wisdom deal bonus Pure damage based on Silencer's current Intelligence, meaning that they scale extremely well into the late game.
• Fuuma Shuriken: He is armed with huge, enchanted three-pointed throwing blades which he calls "glaives".
• Glass Cannon: Since he has good Agility and steals two Intelligence points from enemies when they die near him or by his hand (meaning that even a support Silencer can rack up large amounts of stolen Intelligence simply by assisting in kills), his Glaives of Wisdom become incredibly powerful late game, because their damage scales with Intelligence. However, his base Strength and Agility are so low that if caught out he can be killed fairly easily, which is why Force Staff is considered a major item for Silencer to purchase, even as a carry.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: Silencer is a spellcaster whose skillset is tailored to make other spellcasters useless.
• Ingesting Knowledge: Presumably possesses some form of this, since he can permanently steal two points of Intelligence (4 with Aghanim's Shard) from any enemy hero that dies near him or anywhere if he gets the kill, and can temporarily steal their Intelligence with Glaives of Wisdom.
• Interface Screw: Global Silence doesn't just silence the opponents, but mutes all game sounds for its duration as well.
• Irony: Silencer's greatest counter is that, as an Intelligence caster, he is also rendered helpless by silences, which will prevent him from casting his spells and disable the bonus damage from Glaives of Wisdom.
• Jack of All Stats: Silencer can be played as a carry or a support, since his abilities give him lots of disable and crowd control (as a support he can build Refresher Orb, becoming little more than a walking double ultimate that is nonetheless still effective), and Glaives of Wisdom scales into late-game with enough kills and farm to allow him to output large amounts of damage.
• Level Drain: Glaives of Wisdom temporarily drains the target's Intelligence with each hit. If an enemy dies under this effect, then Silencer permanently steals 2 Intelligence points from them (4 with Aghanim's Shard).
• Mage Killer: His entire kit is designed to punish spellcasting heroes as heavily as possible by dealing more damage over time to them, triggering a nuke faster, or just straight-up silencing them instantly, and finally stealing their intelligence once they die, which permanently lowers their mana pool.
• Mage Marksman: Unusually for an Intelligence hero, Silencer's right-clicks actually scale very well thanks to Glaives of Wisdom. This means that as a carry, he can build Intelligence items not only to increase the size of his mana pool (thus allowing him to utilize his disable and crowd-control abilities more often) and give him more base damage, but it also increases the Glaives of Wisdom bonus, encouraging players to also build attack speed items to capitalize on his highly-damaging right-clicks.
• Mana Burn: His old Curse of the Silent ability would remove enemies' mana over time, but can be dispelled by casting a spell.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Despite his name, Silencer's only direct-targeted ability that actually applies a silence debuff to his foes upon casting is is ultimate, which has an extremely long cooldown (130 seconds at all levels, comparable to other huge teamfight ultis like Black Hole, Ravage and Guardian Angel). Instead, he "silences" his foes through other means. By permanently stealing their Intelligence through kills and assists, he reduces the size of their mana pools, making them much less able to cast spells over an extended period of time. By debuffing them with Arcane Curse, he forces them to not use spells so that they stop losing HP. And by casting Last Word on them, he either forces them to expend mana to reduce the duration of the slow or keep the mana but risk being caught by an enemy team because of their slow. In effect, Silencer eliminates his opponents' ability to cast spells by reducing the size of their mana pool and then draining it dry so that they have no mana to cast spells even if they haven't been afflicted by the silence debuff.
• Mind Rape: Glaives of Wisdom steal the opponent's Intelligence on hit, and Last Word deals damage based on the difference between their Intelligence and Silencer's own, so presumably there's some of this going on.
• More Dakka: Because Glaives of Wisdom drains Intelligence on each hit, reducing the enemy's mana pool and increasing Silencer's damage output, stacking attack speed items - up to and including Moon Shard - is a perfectly viable build on him.
• Mutual Disadvantage:
  • Against enemies who rely on passive instead of active abilities, like Sniper or Drow Ranger, Silencer's abilities to, well, silence lose much of their effectiveness. On the other hand, these characters will instead take further damage from Curse of the Silent (and Global Silence, if upgraded with Aghanim's Scepter). Last Word also slowed down enemies which can catch the opponent off guard if an enemy team catches them. However, Silencer lost some of his effectiveness against them after his rework, as Arcane Curse isn't too disruptive against enemies that don't cast spells and Last Word no longer disarms or slows.
  • While Global Silence does pierce debuff immunity, the debuff itself is dispellable. As such, when Silencer goes up against enemies with Black King Bar, he has to not be too hasty in using his ultimate if he wants to guarantee the silence on them, and vice versa for the opponent if they don't want to get silenced.
• Mutual Kill: The only situation in which the Silencer does not benefit from a kill. Usually when he gets a kill, he steals 2 Intelligence from his victim. However, if Silencer is dead by the time his killing blow lands, the Intelligence steal does not take effect. In the original DotA, the stolen Intelligence was released from the victim as a projectile and only granted to Silencer when it reached him; if he died before the projectile reached him, he would not gain Intelligence.
• Non-Indicative Name: Nortrom's 'glaives' do not look much like what they're insisted to be. Unless, of course, you go by the fantasy definition of "glaive" codified by Warcraft, in which case they fit the description like a glove.
• Not So Stoic: If his team wins, the usually stoic and subdued Silencer will celebrate quite enthusiastically.
• Pinball Projectile: Glaives of Wisdom bounce towards another enemy when upgraded with a talent.
• Power Nullifier: He specializes in silencing his opponents.
• Purple Is Powerful: Changed to this color scheme from his original red because he was too similar to Dragon Knight.
• The Quiet One: Being the Silencer, he's not one for idle chat. He'll even shush the player if they click him enough.
• Real Men Wear Pink: His color was changed from red to pink/fuchsia for a time to differentiate him from Dragon Knight. It was quickly changed to his current deep purple. Ironically, his intermediate fuchsia color was quite similar to tyrian purple, historically known for being associated with Roman emperors. Too bad that's no longer the automatic association.
• Sadistic Choice
  • Last Word forces the target to choose between casting an ability and losing mana, and then getting damaged and silenced (rendering their spells useless in a teamfight for the duration of the silence, and weakening them later on due to not having the mana to cast what they need), or to save the mana by not casting a spell, and still take the damage and silence anyways.
  • Arcane Curse forces the enemy to choose between not casting a spell and waiting for the debuff to end (thus making them less useful if a teamfight actually starts), or use spells and lose even more HP.
• Status Effects: Specializes in silencing enemies; his third ability, Last Word, also slow the target during the duration of the spell. Global Silence silences every unit on the map, and with Aghanim's Shard, Glaives of Wisdom periodically silences the target.
• The Stoic: Unlike most heroes in the game, Silencer very rarely shows any emotions and speaks with a hoarse, whispery tone.
• Too Awesome to Use: Because Global Silence has such a long cooldown, Silencer is often forced to hold onto his ultimate until a huge teamfight breaks out. Casting it in minor skirmishes could allow the enemy to confidently engage in a major teamfight with the knowledge that Global Silence is on cooldown.
• Took a Level in Badass: In his youth, Silencer was mocked for his lack of magic. After he defeated all of his peers by silencing their own magic, he quickly gained their respect.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Because his ability to permanently steal Intelligence from dying enemies potentially grants him the highest Intelligence growth in the game (and therefore a potentially huge mana pool) if he can get a good number of kills or assists, Silencer is one of the few heroes that can become completely immune to Outworld Devourer's Sanity's Eclipse, no matter their respective levels.
• Un-Sorcerer: Several generations of selective breeding by the mages of Aeol Drias for a Chosen One ended up producing Nortrom, who seemingly had no magic whatsoever. Naturally, this was viewed as a disappointment... until Nortrom showed everyone that his lack of magic also made him incredibly adept at silencing magic.
• Vampiric Draining: Glaives of Wisdom temporarily takes some of the target's Intelligence and gives it to Silencer. Any enemy hero that dies near Silencer or is finished off by him permanently loses two Intelligence points which are then given to him.
• Who's Laughing Now?: He silenced every spell caster laughing at him, then made them bow to him, and his teachers recognized him as The Chosen One.
• You Are Already Dead: Often the result if Silencer casts Last Word on a fleeing foe with low HP. As they will take the damage no matter what (unless they activate spell immunity/invulnerability or have it applied to them), it is not uncommon for the enemy to squirm for 5 seconds prior to dying to the damage.

Dragonus, the Skywrath Mage

"Even on this fallen field, I dedicate my powers to the lofty Skywrath."

Voiced by: TJ Ramini

Since his youth, Dragonus had been close to the Skywrath princess, Shendelzare, and deeply loved her. But as he plunged himself into the study of his kind's magical arts, he became too distracted to notice signs of a plot against her. So when Shendelzare was attacked by her sister and thrown out of the Ghastly Eyrie, Dragonus emerged from his studies too late to save his dear friend and secret love. As a high-ranking sorcerer in the Eyrie's court, the Skywrath Mage is sworn to protect the queen no matter what, but unfortunately for Dragonus, this means he has no choice but to serve Shendelzare's betrayer, as much as he loathes her. While his position prevents him from directly acting against the queen, he is secretly trying to find a way to restore Shendelzare to her rightful post. Only the goddess Scree'auk, who saved Shendelzare's life and transformed her into the Vengeful Spirit, knows of Dragonus' hidden ambition, but deep down, the Skywrath Mage wonders if Vengeful Spirit can be restored to her original form... and if his transformed love is willing to forgive his failure to save her.

With his many damaging spells, the Skywrath Mage is capable of outputting enormous amounts of damage. Though he doesn't need many items to dish out pain, he does become much more effective with farm, making him a potent core as well as a viable support. His first spell, Arcane Bolt, sends out a slow-moving homing ball of magic towards an enemy. Though the spell's base damage is low, it also deals bonus damage based on Skywrath Mage's intelligence, allowing it to scale in power as he gains levels and items. With Concussive Shot, Skywrath Mage launches a projectile towards the nearest enemy hero in a large range, inflicting damage and slowing enemies in an area of effect. Thanks to its long range, this spell can be used to both initiate a gank and finish off fleeing foes. Arcane Seal complements his other abilities well, as it not only inflicts silence on a target, but also greatly lowering their magic resistance. This means that the target will take much more damage from Skywrath Mage's other spells. Skywrath Mage's fearsome ultimate is Mystic Flare. This powerful spell summons a storm of magical energy focused on a small area. Enemy heroes within that area will constantly receive a large amount of magic damage, spread out among the targets. Combined with an ally's disable to prevent them from escaping, this spell can inflict a lot of pain on an enemy hero. Should Skywrath Mage obtain Aghanim's Scepter, his spells will automatically target a second nearby enemy upon being cast, doubling his magical damage output.

In Artifact, Skywrath Mage is a blue hero. He has the Active Ability Concussive Shot, which lowers the armor of a hero and its neighboring allies by 2 for one round. His signature card, Mystic Flare, deals 12 damage evenly divided between a target unit and its allied neighbors.

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• Achilles' Heel: One of the biggest jokes relating to Skywrath Mage is how Pugna's Nether Ward can cause Skywrath to one-shot himself by casting his maxed Mystic Flare in range of it.
• Acrophobic Bird: As per the norm in this game, Dragonus can't bypass terrain despite constantly flying.
• Adaptation Species Change: In DotA, he was an elf riding a giant bird. With Dota 2, he became a Skywrath, a race of human-like beings with bird features like wings and talons.
• Anti-Magic: Ancient Seal silences the target and increases the magical damage taken by them.
• Artifact Title: An weird case - the Skywrath race was newly made for Dota 2 for Vengeful Spirit, a while before Dragonus's release, and the name was grandfathered into the original DotA when Dragonus was released there as a High Elf. When he was then ported to Dota 2, the "Skywrath Mage" title became relevant again, coming full circle.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Mystic Flare is easily one of the biggest nukes in the game on a surprisingly short cooldown, but also has a number of drawbacks to offset its power: it costs a ton of mana to cast (meaning Skywrath Mage will almost certainly run dry after using it once if he's also been using any other spells), its damage is dealt over time in a small area (meaning it's easily avoidable without setup and can be defended against), and if it hits multiple enemies its damage is evenly distributed between them, making it hard to maximize the damage against groups of enemies.
• Bastard Understudy: What Dragonus is forced to become after Vengeful Spirit's sister's successful coup. He has several voice responses regarding "biding [his] time".
• Beam Spam: Skywrath's ultimate, Mystic Flare, saturates a small area with magical strikes. Worth noting it's the game's most damaging spell with a very short cooldown, as well as the most mana-expensive spell in the game, so it requires careful positioning to keep a single enemy within the damage area. If he purchases Aghanim's Scepter, casting Mystic Flare causes a second one to be dropped on a nearby enemy hero, letting him nuke down two enemies at once and create a large hazard zone that few heroes would want to cross.
• Black Mage: He is one of the most fearsome nukers in the game and can easily mow down opponents from afar with his various spells.
• Bling of War: The Golden Empyrean, a very rare golden version of Empyrean.
• Byronic Hero: Though he is described as a good-hearted person, he truly cares only about his love, the Vengeful Spirit, and is haunted by his failure to protect her. The lengths to which he would go to save Shendelzare can put his morality in question.
• Cold Ham: He doesn't have to bellow and still comes up as a Large Ham, probably due to his preference for dramatic, long-winded speeches.
  Skywrath Mage: From the Ghastly Eyrie I can see to the ends of the world, and from this vantage point I declare with utter certainty that this one is in the bag!
• Damage Discrimination: Mystic Flare will only damage enemy heroes if possible, ignoring creeps, illusions and summons unless there are no heroes in its area of effect.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Ancient Seal silences the target and decreases its magical resistance (the greatest next to Ethereal forms).
• Failure Hero: His lore. Basically it all starts with how he failed to prevent Shendelzare's fall from grace and is now stuck with serving her more ruthless sister that he hates.
• Fantastic Racism: If his line isn't about how shit it is to be him, it's about how superior the Skywrath are to everyone else.
• Feather Motif: His various spells often incorporate birds or feathers into their particle effects.
• Flechette Storm: When Skywrath Mage is equipped with the Immortal Empyrean staff, Mystic Flare now rains spears inside its area of effect.
• Foreshadowing: Prior to Dragonus' release on Warcraft III DotA, Vengeful Spirit's lore mentions her race as Skywrath. Do the math.
• Glass Cannon: Skywrath is notable for being one of the game's most powerful nukers, as he can set up targets with Concussive Shot and Ancient Seal (which silences and slows them, and reduces their magic resistance), and then blast them down with Arcane Bolt and Mystic Flare (which deal more damage due to Ancient Seal, and the latter which will drop most of its damage on the target due to the slow). However, he's also extremely easy to kill if ever caught out of position.
• Harping on About Harpies: With a pair of wings and bird talons instead of normal feet, the Skywrath are essentially harpies except that they are not a One-Gender Race.
• Hit Box Dissonance: Mystic Flare will distribute its damage evenly among all heroes in its area of effect. So while it may drop absurd amounts of damage onto a single target, casting it on two enemies will halve its damage, greatly reducing its effectiveness.
• Homing Projectile: While this applies to all targeted spells, both Arcane Bolt and Concussive Shot qualify for this, the first due to its extremely slow travel speed, and the second for its long range fire-and-forget nature.
• Informed Flaw: Despite being a Skywrath, who are supposedly notable for being vengeful and unforgiving, Dragonus exhibits none of these traits, most likely a case of My Species Doth Protest Too Much. Of course, he can still be those things, he's just better at keeping it in check. And it's mostly directed at the Skywrath queen rather than everyone else.
• Instant Runes: Ancient Seal creates a circle filled protruding triangles and marked with a symbol.
• It's All About Me: If you aren't Shendelzare, to him you're just either an insult to her loss, or a obstacle to be blasted apart.
• Large Ham: Mainly due to his use of Purple Prose.
• Light Is Good: Zig-zagged. He's not technically a light-themed character, but his spell visuals, golden armor look fairly angelic firmly place him in this category. Personality? He's noble and good hearted, but he's a little... obsessed in restoring his love Shendelzare back to normal even probably at cost of the virtues of the Skywrath, and is a bit of a Skywrath supremacist... and in the same time came to secretly hate his own Queen for her foul play in Shendelzare's fall from grace, possibly hinting that his supremacist attitude was a result of having to follow the ruthless new Queen's orders. Definitely good, but has a big flaw he's juggling.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Played straight (which oddly makes it an inversion in Dota) with Arcane Bolt, a nuke whose damage scales with Dragonus' Intelligence. As a result, if he manages to acquire many items which grant bonus Intelligence over the course of a match, Arcane Bolt will scale extremely well into the late game.
• Long-Range Fighter: All of his spells have a high range, which means that he can snipe foes from far away. In particular, Concussive Shot has a 1600 range (global with the appropriate talent), meaning that anybody just inside of visual range in the daytime is susceptible to being hit by it. The opposite thing is true as well: because of Skywrath's abysmal strength and agility, he can be very easily killed if the enemy can get close to him.
• Magic Missile Storm: Mystic Flare rains down countless bolts of magical energy onto a small area. Equipping the Empyrean cosmetic changes it into a Storm of Blades instead, replacing the magical bolts with spears.
• Magic Staff: His weapon, a large staff which fires energy balls.
• Noble Top Enforcer: He is mostly noble, but currently the Skywrath are run by ruthless people and he doesn't like them, but has no power to overthrow them.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: Arcane Bolt has a 500 travel speed, much slower than even ranged attack projectiles and one of the few projectiles that travels at a speed slower than the movement speed cap (550). If an enemy retreats, it is actually possible for them to avoid taking the damage for several seconds, long enough in some cases to use a healing item to avoid death, and extremely high-mobility heroes like Slark and Weaver can actually outrun the projectile for extended lengths of time.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: In spite of his misgivings to the current ruler, he's proud as a Skywrath and consider other races 'lesser'. Also, the Skywrath in general are pretty snappy about battles...
• Purple Prose: Tends to speak in long sentences full of flowery-sounding words.
  Skywrath Mage: Those who tangle with the Skywrath risk a fall from starry heights.
• Spam Attack: Arcane Bolt has very low cooldown (5 seconds at level 1, and two seconds at max level), negligible mana cost, and scales with Intelligence, leading to it being used as an overglorified autoattack. His Aghanim's Scepter upgrade adds a whole new level of this: each time he casts a spell, a second enemy near the target is hit by that same spell, allowing him to spam out a ridiculous volume of Arcane Bolts, silence multiple enemies, and drop two Mystic Flares at a time. This also synergises with Shield of the Scion (his Aghanim's Shard ability), which provides him armor and intelligence every time he casts a spell.
• Squishy Wizard: Skywrath Mage's strength gain is very low and he has the second lowest agility growth in the game (tied with Undying and only higher than Tiny), making him extremely squishy without the armor bonus from Shield of the Scion.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Friend to Shendelzare, and has a crush on her. Too bad she became Vengeful Spirit.
• Weaksauce Weakness: No matter how much setup you have for Mystic Flare, it's possible for the spell to be completely wasted by a simple Force Staff or Glimmer Cape, both of which are common purchases for supports that can be cast on teammates.
• Winged Humanoid: The Skywrath are a race of them. His wings can be customized with many styles.
• Wings Do Nothing: Due to gameplay mechanics, he can't fly over terrain.

Raijin Thunderkeg, the Storm Spirit

"Let the fun begin!"

Voiced by: John Patrick Lowrie

Many generations ago, when the plains beyond the Wailing Mountains suffered from drought and famine, a humble and good-natured elementalist known as Thunderkeg pursued a dangerous solution. He summoned the fearsome Storm Celestial Raijin and asked for rain. Perceiving Thunderkeg's request as presumptuous arrogance against one as mighty as Raijin, the enraged Celestial proceeded to devastate the land with its unrelenting power. With no other way to stop Raijin's barrage of gales and floods, Thunderkeg cast a suicidal spell to bind the Storm Celestial within his own body, merging the two into Raijin Thunderkeg, the jovial, irrepressible Storm Spirit.

Storm Spirit is a highly mobile nuker and disabler usually played in the mid lane as a carry, whose speed and damage output are only matched by his massive mana consumption. His first ability places a Static Remnant, which detonates for area damage when an enemy approaches. When he closes with an enemy, Storm Spirit can use Electric Vortex to bind the enemy and pull it towards him, while slowing himself in the process; with Aghanim's Scepter, it pulls all enemies near him, making it potentially very dangerous in a teamfight. Storm Spirit's damage and chasing potential are greatly augmented by his passive ability Overload; each time he casts an ability, this ability causes his next attack to deal bonus magical damage in an area and greatly slow enemies. Combined with his low-cooldown abilities, Storm Spirit can alternate between spells and attacks to deal heavy chip damage. Ball Lightning, Storm Spirit's ultimate ability, turns him into a true force of nature, allowing him to zap across the battlefield at high speed as an invulnerable bolt of lightning. With no cooldown on this ability, Storm Spirit is nearly impossible to catch or escape from, but its drain on his mana pool cannot be overstated, meaning that he has to watch his mana carefully and stack mana regeneration to avoid burning out.

In Artifact, Storm Spirit is a black hero. His Passive Ability, Overload, increases his Attack by 2 until the end of the next combat phase whenever you play a black card in any lane. His signature card is Ball Lightning.

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• Achilles' Heel: Due to his frailty and reliance on his ultimate to initiate (as well as most of his damage output coming from his spells), Storm Spirit can become very easy prey if he's silenced in the middle of a gank, or runs out of mana in the wrong place.
• Adaptation Species Change: A Pandaren in DotA. He still had a similar origin story as a lightning being imprisoned in a mortal body at the cost of the mortal's life.
• Acrofatic: He moves surprisingly easy for his weight, often doing mid-air flips and striking poses when casting spells.
• Anti-Escape Mechanism: Storm Spirit is often considered one of the most powerful long-range initiators in the game, even without many items. If he manages to farm the items he needs, he becomes a force to be reckoned with.
  • Ball Lightning, while costly in terms of mana, allows Storm Spirit to jump on any enemies he wishes that are in the same general part of the map that he is. It also deals more damage the longer the travel distance.
  • Overload, which procs each time Storm Spirit casts a spell, will cause his attacks to drastically slow the target's movement speed, effectively dropping anything that isn't at the speed cap down to minimum speed if the attack connects.
  • Electric Vortex will disable an enemy for up to 2.5 seconds, preventing them from reacting while Storm Spirit pummels them.
  • Static Remnant deals respectable damage and has an extremely low cooldown, allowing players to proc Overload with almost every attack while dealing large amounts of damage.
• Art Evolution: Storm Spirit had his model reworked during the Three Spirits update, to match the visual style of the other two elemental spirits.
• Big Fun: Fairly pudgy, and very cheerful.
• Big "NO!": One of the funniest sound clips that you can hear from him when your team loses.
  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
• Black Mage: Storm Spirit is a purely offensive caster, none of his spells having any direct defensive application.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Each individual Overload attack deals a pitiful amount of damage (comparable to damage-over-time spells), but it's possible to proc it on every right-click if you can cast a spell between each attack. Used properly, it can lay down a surprising amount of damage over a few seconds, comparable to many higher-tier damage nukes, and this isn't even counting the physical damage from the attacks or any additional magical damage from casting Static Remnant and Ball Lightning.
• Defog of War: Static Remnant gives flying vision around the remnant for the duration that they're active, allowing players to use it to scout up cliffs, through trees, and into the Roshan pit.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Because the mana cost of Ball Lightning - the main ganking tool of Storm Spirit - is relative to the distance traveled and the ability cannot be cancelled mid-cast, good mana management is essential to play Storm Spirit: if you overextend, you can very easily find yourself in a bad position without any mana. A good Raijin player, can, however, launch almost impossible ganks and initiate teamfights with ease, and get off scot-free.
• Dynamic Entry: Ball Lightning allows Storm Spirit to travel vast distances and initiate on heroes who aren't aware that he's in the area.
• Fragile Speedster: He is one of the fastest and most mobile heroes in the game, capable of travelling over impassable terrain at will to initiate and escape ganks. On the other hand, Storm Spirit is not a tanky hero with his low Strength. If he can't zip out, he dies.
• Fusion Dance: The combined form of the Storm Celestial and a human wizard.
• Glowing Eyes: His eyes glow white, representing how he's half thunder god. The immortal item The Lightning Orchid changes the glow to red.
• Grand Theft Me: An unusual heroic example. Thunderkeg used a spell to trap the Celestial spirit Raijin in his own body.
• Great Escape: Ball Lightning makes Storm Spirit extremely hard to pin down without silences. A gank has to either keep him locked down while it finishes him off, or burn all his mana reserves out, not an easy feat when he's always building mana regeneration.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: Storm Spirit is a squishy, high-mobility hero that specializes in hunting down other squishy, high-mobility heroes, as Ball Lightning lets him initiate on them from far outside their effective range and easily chase them down if they try to escape, while his other abilities let him hold the target in place and burst them down.
• Invulnerable Attack: Ball Lightning temporarily turns Storm Spirit invulnerable when he's zipping.
• It's All About Me: He enjoys making animate sculptures of himself, and generally doesn't give much respect to other heroes.
  Storm Spirit, casting Static Remnant: "Ooh, who's that handsome devil?"
• Large Ham: Gloriously so. Many of his lines are spoken in a loud, bombastic voice.
• Magikarp Power: Storm Spirit starts the game as a ranged hero with moderate right-click damage and a nuke that is essentially melee-ranged, and is very vulnerable to enemy supports ganking the mid lane until he hits level 6. Without many items he won't do much in a teamfight besides flying short distances and throwing out mildly annoying but not very strong Overload right-clicks and the occasional Electric Vortex. That said, once he gets 2 big items (usually Kaya and Orchid Malevolence), his extreme mobility allows him to deprive the enemy of their jungle, easily eat supports and compete with other carries by his ability to engage/disengage at will and outplay them in general (zipping away when the other team pops their Black King Bars or ultimates, or quickly picking someone off before they have a chance to get their skills off).
• Money Multiplier: Spamming Static Remnant and Ball Lightning combined with Overload makes Storm Spirit one of the best stack clearer mid heroes in the game. It's very hard to shut his farm down since even if you completely overwhelmed him at mid, he can simply go to the jungle and catch up if his supports are at least semi-competent.
• Monochromatic Eyes: Solid white eyes.
• Motor Mouth: All nearby players will hear voice lines from him every time he emerges from Ball Lightning, making him one of the chattier heroes in the game.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Starting from 7.31, Null Talisman reduces the mana cost required to cast their abilities and at 25 minutes, doubles from 4% to 8%. However what made the item even more prominent is the fact that reduction stacks with one another. This led to Storm Spirit players purchasing six Null Talismans which allows him to traverse huge amount of distances using Ball Lightning, often zipping through the lanes before zipping back through the fountain to regenerate his mana and continue ad nauseum, allowing Storm players to indiscriminiately push through the creep waves with impunity or even better, catch enemy heroes while still having enough mana to escape from retaliation all through the power of a full Null Talisman build. In 7.31d, Null Talisman's mana cost reduction was replaced by a bonus to maximum mana pool.
• Pinball Projectile: One of Storm Spirit's level 25 talents allows Overload attacks to bounce up to 2 times at random enemies.
• Power Glows: Since he's half Storm Celestial, his body glows with electricity.
• Ride the Lightning: Ball Lightning lets Storm Spirit travel across vast distances on the map, and deal a large amount of damage to any enemies he hits along the way (the longer the distance, the greater the damage). However, it's extremely mana-expensive, costing a percentage of his maximum mana pool to begin, and more per distance traveled, rather than a fixed number. As such, Kaya is pretty much considered a necessity to make up for the rate at which he guzzles mana.
• The Rival: Artifact reveals that he sees himself as one to Zeus, fellow deity in charge of thunder.
  "There are number of things one could say about Zeus. He has a delightful mustache. His physique is chiseled out of marble. And when it comes to two-timing your wife while disguised as a swarn, there is no equal. But one thing he is not is 'God of Thunder'. For I am thunder. And lightning. And wind. And rain. Indeed, I am the tempest itself... and there is no god to whom I bow."
• Self-Duplication: Static Remnant creates an image of Storm Spirit that explodes when an enemy comes near it.
• Shock and Awe: Due to half of him being a thunder god, all of his abilities involve electricity.
• Some Dexterity Required: While simply using Ball Lightning to initiate and then hitting the target with an Overload attack can be relatively straightforward, it takes careful management of your spells and split-second timing in order to make the most of your attacks, since you want to attack after casting a spell and you never want to cast two spells without an attack inbetween.
• Spam Attack: Storm Spirit's playstyle revolves around spamming the very cheap Static Remnant and zapping around the battlefield with Ball Lightning as frequently as possible to take advantage of Overload.
• Spell Blade: Overload causes Storm Spirit to deal bonus magic damage on the next auto-attack he uses after casting a spell. While each individual attack doesn't do much, Static Remnant has an extremely low cooldown (and Ball Lightning has none), meaning that with the right combo it's possible to drop upwards of a thousand magical damage on a target in the span of a few seconds.
• Squishy Wizard: Storm Spirit's starting Strength and Strength growth are atrocious, meaning that he'll go down fast if caught out of position without mana.
• Super-Speed: When using Ball Lightning, Storm Spirit can move at a ludicrous 2500 speed. Compare it to the normal maximum speed attainable, 550.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Once Storm gets at least Kaya and Orchid Malevolence, most supports become no more than food to feed him. He can simply jump in from the fog with Ball Lightning, use Orchid Malevolence to make his prey hapless, then use his combo and the support in question is more than likely already dead. Repeat chain feed for maximum rage - there's a reason that many support players absolutely despise a Storm Spirit on the enemy team.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: Blue, like most lightning in the game. Except when he's equipped with the Lightning Orchid hat, which changes Ball Lightning to red.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Downplayed with Electric Vortex: while it does pull the target towards Storm Spirit's position, the cast range is quite short (so Storm Spirit has to be fairly near the target at the first place) and the distance in which the target is dragged is even shorter (just enough to be hit by Static Remnant).

Boush, the Tinker

"I have several theories I would like to put into practice."

Voiced by: Harry S. Robins (original), Jason Spisak (Underlords, Artifact)

As with all Keen, Boush looks upon magic with disdain, preferring to put his trust in science and logic. Unfortunately for him, it's still not enough to escape supernatural altercations. As a leading authority on the study of natural laws, Boush headed a laboratory deep in the mist-shrouded caverns of the Violet Plateau to study the forces that control the universe. Unfortunately, his research team opened a portal to some eldritch realm, and the otherworldly horrors they unleashed wiped out out all the researchers save for Boush himself, who managed to escape the laboratory using only his wits and gadgets.

Wait, this sounds familiar...

Tinker is a ranged ganker and pusher with the unique capability to refresh his items and spells constantly, as long as he has the mana to support it. While he has low stat gain and is very vulnerable to ganking at the beginning of the game, this changes as he gains levels and the proper items, turning him into one of the most mobile pusher in the entire game (Only Nature's Prophet rivals him in terms of mobility). Laser is a single target spell that deals pure damage to the target and anyone around them while also blinding the main target for a 100% miss chance, immensely useful for stopping rightclicking enemies when they lack spell immunity or clearing out clumps of units. Heat-Seeking Missile is a long range spell that sends two missiles at the nearest enemy heroes, but only as long as they're visible. When under fire, Boush's trusty Defense Matrix can provide himself or an ally with a damage-absorbing barrier that also gives status resistance, reducing the duration of debuffs. Tinker's ultimate is what completes the hero, coming with two abilities that share levels and have powerful effects. The first ability, Keen Conveyance, teleports Tinker to any allied structure after a short channel time; leveling the spell allows teleporting to creeps and eventually heroes as well, giving him immense global mobility. The second component, Rearm, refreshes all spells and items on Tinker, with the only drawback being that Tinker must channel Rearm for a while before it refreshes him and the hefty mana cost. Note however, that not all items can be refreshed by Rearm (Hand of Midas, Linken's Sphere, and Refresher Orb are some of these to put it short). Aghanim's Shard unlocks yet another tool in his arsenal, a Warp Flare that teleports the target away while dealing minor damage and reducing their cast and attack range.

In Artifact, Tinker is a black hero. His Active Ability is Laser, which deals 3 damage to a unit and disarms it for one turn. His signature card, March of the Machines, is an improvement that has three charges: each turn, one charge is consumed to deal 2 damage to all enemy units and the tower.

In Dota Underlords, Tinker is a tier 3 hero. His ability, Heat-Seeking Missile, fires homing rockets at three random enemies, damaging them.

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• Adaptation Species Change: The original Tinker was a goblin, much like Clockwerk. He was changed to Keen (the Dota 2 version of dwarves and gnomes) in Dota 2.
• Anchored Teleportation: Keen Conveyance allows Tinker to teleport to allied structures at level 1, non-hero units at level 2, and heroes at level 3.
• The Artifact: The cosmetic item Mecha Boots of Travel Mk III gives Tinker a unique teleport animation and icon for the actual Boots of Travel item, which harks back to when Keen Conveyance did not exist (and Boots of Travel was the item to rush on Tinker in every game). While the animation was repurposed for Keen Conveyance, the icon could now only be seen if a Tinker player didn't read the patch notes. This also happened to the Rollermawster cosmetic, which applies a custom model to March of the Machines, an ability that was eventually removed and replaced by Warp Flare.
• Backpack Cannon: Tinker doesn't carry a cannon on his back so much as a self-contained weapons platform, packing two laser cannons and a missile launcher.
• Badass Bookworm: Surviving unknown horrors unleashed by a portal to an Eldritch Location definitely qualifies him.
• Barrier Warrior: Defense Matrix is a barrier that blocks damage and provides status resistance to a friendly hero.
• Blinded by the Light: Laser temporarily blinds the target, making it miss all attacks without True Strike for 3 seconds.
• Cooldown Manipulation: Rearm resets all cooldowns on Tinker's skills and items, allowing him to constantly cast his spells, as long as he has the mana to support it and is not interrupted when casting Rearm.
• Deflector Shields: Defense Matrix gives an ally (or Tinker himself) a barrier that blocks damage and disables.
• Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: He's always smoking tobacco with a pipe, and can even speak without taking it off.
• Does Not Like Magic: Tinker doesn't like magic, at all. In fact, he dislikes magic so much that if he kills Anti-Mage, he reassures him that he fully supports Anti-Mage's quest to end magic.
• Dynamic Entry: Keen Conveyance in conjunction with Rearm gives Tinker global mobility only rivalled by Nature's Prophet and (to a lesser extent) Wisp and Underlord.
• Energy Ball: Tinker's main weapon used for right-clicks: a small cannon mounted on top of his suit that shoots energy balls.
• Energy Weapon: Tinker's back-mounted weapons platform incorporates two cannons that fire energy balls (for his right-click attacks) and lasers (for his first skill).
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Despite fighting against (and sometimes alongside) all manner of wizards and Eldritch Abominations and using magical artifacts, Tinker seems to be rather condescending toward anything not explicitly scientific or technological.
  Tinker (killing Alchemist): "What sort of loon believes in alchemy?"
  Tinker (killing Warlock): "Warlock, you should put down your spellbook and pick up a textbook!"
• For Science!: His motivation.
• Gadgeteer Genius
• Glass Cannon: He can dish out tons of magic and pure damage with his easily spammable spells, but don't expect for him to survive the slightest retaliation (although Defense Matrix does make him somewhat more resilient than he looks). Farming up a Linken's Sphere is a common tactic to improve his (otherwise low) survivability.
• Improvised Weapon: His Laser was originally designed as a cutting tool.
• Item Amplifier: Rearm can reset the cooldowns of item active abilities as well as skills, and is what makes Tinker such a unique and versatile hero, allowing him to jump around the map with Blink Dagger, constantly bombard an enemy with Dagon, or keep them permanently helpless with Scythe of Vyse.
• Item Caddy: Rearm reloads items together with skills, so stacking items with active abilities (most notably Blink Dagger, Scythe of Vyse, Force Staff, and Dagon) is a common tactic with Tinker, since the low cooldown makes them incredibly powerful, if hard to control with 6+ active abilities.
• Macross Missile Massacre: A level 15 talent increases the missile count of Heat-Seeking Missile to 3, and thanks to Rearm, Tinker can cast it constantly.
• Magikarp Power: Tinker's effectiveness is based entirely around Rearm. His stat growth is bad all around and his abilities are held back by their terrible cooldowns, but once he gets some levels, he becomes a global ganking, pushing menace. Any further items on Tinker only make him even more dangerous, allowing him to relentlessly chase and evaporate enemy heroes while keeping them permanently disabled.
• Non-Standard Skill Learning: Unlike most other heroes, Tinker has two ultimates Keen Conveyance and Rearm, which are always levelled at the same time, requiring only a single skill point.
• Noodle Incident: In Artifact, Tinker and fellow Keen Mazzie had a falling out in the past, which resulted in Tinker making a hobby of devising various creative methods to murder Mazzie despite having to work with him.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Patch 7.33 replaced the 3-second cooldown applied when a Blink Dagger's owner takes damage from heroes or Roshan with a 3-second mute. The only hero that feels any real impact from this change is Tinker—when focused on, he must now try to avoid damage for a whole 3 seconds before being able to blink away like everyone else, instead of simply casting Rearm to nullify the 3-second cooldown and escaping before the enemy could reapply any damage^note Refresher Orb and Ex Machina can do the same thing, but in practice this happens extremely rarely.
• Power Nullifier: Laser blinds the targets, causing them to miss all right-click attacks for 3 seconds, so if used on a right-click carry it will effectively render them useless for that duration unless they have Monkey King Bar.
• Reflecting Laser: After Tinker gets Aghanim's Scepter, Laser will reflect to an enemy near the initial target. Additionally, it visually appears to refract off the main target(s) onto nearby enemies.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud
  Tinker (casting Laser): "Pew, pew, pew pew pew!"
• Schizo Tech: According to his backstory, the Keen Folk use advanced technology due to their skepticism towards magic. Tinker manages to stand out even by those standards though, as he packs homing missiles and lasers in contrast to the Clock Punk motif of other Keen heroes.
• Science Hero: What Tinker lacks in magic and strength, he makes up for with lasers and missiles.
• Shrink Ray: When upgraded with Aghanim's Scepter, Laser reduces the targets' model size and current health values.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Contrary to what you'd expect, most Tinker players will simply load him up with Stat Sticks like Kaya, Aether Lens, Bloodstone, and most importantly Aghanim's Scepter after getting his core Blink Dagger, rather than grabbing actives like Dagon and Veil of Discord. Since Tinker's own abilities are plenty damaging to begin with, he doesn't really need anything else to bring the pain, and investing in passive bonuses cuts down on the number of active abilities you have to juggle.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: His helmet comes complete with a pair of goggles.
• Some Dexterity Required: If you have low APM, you can't play Tinker to his fullest potential. Apart from the basic requirements you are need in order to play Tinker, which is mainly decent mid lane prior knowledge and map awareness, you need to be able to use multiple abilities in succession, quickly and with no error. Mid-late game you have to be doing a lot of combos consistently, and even if it might be the same thing over and over, it's still using a lot of abilities much quicker than anyone else.
• Spam Attack: With Rearm, Tinker can spam any spell and item ability as long as he has mana, unlike other nukers who can throw their most powerful spells only once or twice per teamfight without Refresher Orb or Refresher Shard.
• Squishy Wizard: While Tinker can be an unstoppable split-pusher and counter-pusher in the right hands, a properly executed gank can put him down quite quickly, especially since his ultimate relies on channeling in order to reset his cooldowns (meaning that it can be interrupted).
• Super-Persistent Missile: There is no way to stop his Heat-Seeking Missiles unless you become spell immune while they are en route.
  Tinker: (killing with missile) Ooh... they never miss!
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: A popular build on Tinker involves getting Blink Dagger into Dagon 5 and Ethereal Blade. Combined with Keen Conveyance and enough mana, Tinker can teleport to any enemy hero busy farming creeps, unleash all of his massive burst damage on them and kill them before they can react, and chase them down with Blink Dagger if needed.
• Teleport Spam: Rearm allows Tinker to constantly teleport short distances (when combined with Blink Dagger) and around the map (with Keen Conveyance) with no cooldown.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Replace "Violet Plateau" with "Black Mesa", and "Boush" with "Gordon Freeman", and you have the premise of Half-Life.
  Tinker: (killing a hero) Next time, try a crowbar!
• You Shall Not Pass!: Heat-Seeking Missile (and Laser as well, after Tinker gets Aghanim's Scepter) spam makes it very difficult to push a tower defended by a Tinker, as they provide a near-constant stream of damage that's only limited by Tinker's mana pool, which he can go back and refill in a few seconds anyway.

Demnok Lannik, the Warlock

"More pages for my Black Grimoire!"

Voiced by: Sam A. Mowry

As the Chief Curator of Ultimyr Academy's Arcane Archives, Demnok Lannik is tireless and fearless in his pursuit of mystical lore and forbidden texts from the most obscure and treacherous places. As a way to defend himself against the dangerous entities that frequently guarded the literary artifacts of his desire, he turned to sorcery, quickly mastering the dark arts and becoming the most powerful Warlock in Ultimyr's history. With a mighty demon from the Outer Hells bound within his Dreadwood staff to be summoned on his whim, Demnok continues his pursuit of knowledge and has begun compiling his findings into his own Black Grimoire.

Warlock is a hero generally played as a support or semi-support, whose powerful spells can help with both pushing and fighting. His first ability, Fatal Bonds, links the life force of several enemies together. A fraction of any damage dealt to a bonded enemy will also be dealt to all other bonded units, which has the potential to greatly multiply the power of area-of-effect attacks. If an enemy affected by Fatal Bonds is killed, a Minor Imp spawns from their corpse, which will target a nearby enemy (preferring heroes with Fatal Bonds on them) and cause an Eldritch Explosion to deal area damage upon reaching their target or dying. His second spell is Shadow Word, a very versatile incantation which can be cast on either an ally or enemy, healing or damaging them over time. Upheaval, his third spell, causes Warlock to channel a curse affecting a large area that grows stronger over time, damaging and slowing enemies caught in its area of effect. Aghanim's Shard also causes Upheaval to spawn Minor Imps over time while being channeled, and will make all of Warlock's Minor Imps stronger. Finally, Warlock's ultimate ability, Chaotic Offering, causes a powerful Golem to erupt from the ground, stunning all foes in the vicinity. After being summoned, the Golem can be commanded by Warlock to strike its foes with powerful attacks while burning them over time with its Permanent Immolation. With Aghanim's Scepter, two Golems are summoned, albeit with slightly reduced power. Although the Warlock is weak by himself, the utility of his spells allow him to sow chaos among the enemy ranks and make the task much easier for his teammates.

In Dota Underlords, Warlock is a tier 1 hero. His ability, Shadow Word can either grant an ally healing over time, or deal damage over time to an enemy.

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• Action Bomb: The Minor Imps summoned by Fatal Bonds and Aghanim's Shard-upgraded Upheaval attack by running at enemies and exploding to deal damage in an area (they do have a normal attack, but it's only used against buildings when there are no other targets nearby). They also explode when they die or expire.
• Adaptation Name Change: In the original DotA, Chaotic Offering was called Rain of Chaos, which is also a spell used by high-ranking demons like Tichondrius and Archimonde in Warcraft III. The creature that it summons was also renamed, from an Infernal to simply Warlock's Golem.
• Adaptation Species Change: In the original DotA, Warlock was an orc, but in Dota 2, he's an Oglodi, as seen by having a similar nose and eyes to Axe and Disruptor, despite his pale skin.
• Adventurer Archaeologist: The whole reason he became a Warlock was to protect himself from whatever was protecting the tombs he raided for artifacts.
• Ambiguously Evil: His use of dark magic has caused concern among Ultimyr's staff and in her Arcana voice lines, Windranger definitely thinks he's gone off the slippery slope, and some of his lines are definitely befitting an evil sorcerer. However, there's no evidence of him actually doing anything evil other than researching the very magics he uses.
• Badass Bookworm: His dedication to uncovering artifacts became his motivation to learn the dark arts, which he managed to do in his spare time faster than others who were actually studying on a full-time basis. In-game, despite being an Intelligence support hero, his high Strength gain makes him surprisingly durable as the game progresses, as opposed to most other Intelligence supports, who tend to fall over from a light breeze.
• Canis Latinicus: Some of his responses while casting spells are Latin-sounding nonsense words.
• Combat Medic: Shadow Word can also heal his allies.
• The Dark Arts: He's a practitioner of it.
• Death-Activated Superpower: One of Warlock's level 20 talents causes him to summon a Golem in his place when he dies.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: When killed, Warlock's Imp minions explode, dealing damage to nearby enemies.
• Disaster Dominoes: This can very easily be the result of casting Fatal Bonds on a creep wave or teamfight, since when a bonded enemy dies, it spawns an Imp that does area damage, which in turn gets amplified by Fatal Bonds and can easily result in even more death and more Imps.
• Dynamic Entry: Chaotic Offering summons a Golem^note or two, or even four, depending on Warlock's items in a fiery explosion, which briefly stuns all enemies in its radius. The stun also goes through spell immunity, and has one of the largest areas of effect in the game.
• Elite Mooks: Warlock's Golems qualify as one of the most powerful and dangerous summons in the game; not only do they deal large amounts of bonus damage with every auto-attack (and this damage is Pure and ignores debuff immunity), but they also deal constant magical damage to all enemies in their reach and can be difficult to kill if supported by a team. By the end of a game, a well-farmed Warlock can summon four golems at a time (using both Aghanim's Scepter and Refresher Orb or Refresher Shard; plus a fifth if he dies with the appropriate level 20 talent, or even a sixth if he doesn't mind buying back and subsequently feeding twice in a row).
• Heavily Armored Mook: Warlock's level 25 talents either increase his golems' armor by 20 or magic resistance by 80%, making them much more difficult to bring down.
• The Faceless: Warlock's Golem has no face, only a set of bindings that vaguely resemble one.
• Faceless Eye: One of Warlock's cosmetic Golems, Ishul-Shog the Watcher, has a huge eye where a face should be.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom
• Golem: His ultimate summons a lesser demon called a Golem, which can be used to push towers or contribute to teamfights.
• Happiness in Slavery: Although his golems are captive demons, they don't really seem to hold it against Warlock. In fact, they have voice lines that indicate genuine anger and sorrow at Warlock's death, with some demanding vengeance for the master.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Warlock is notable for having some of the most powerful teamfighting abilities in the game, capable of ripping entire teams apart almost by himself if they dare to clump up. Fatal Bonds effectively doubles the power of area-of-effect spells that hit multiple enemy Heroes, Chaotic Offering will stun everything in its area (through spell immunity as well) for one second while the Golem's passive abilities help it to deal loads of damage to multiple enemies at once, and Upheaval will slow all of the enemies by a drastic amount, making it harder for them to split up.
• In the Hood
• Living Weapon: The Immortal staff Hellborn Grasp has a set of custom animations for various situations, such as a Finger Wag while channeling Upheaval, and a thumbs-up gesture while sinking into the ground after death.
• Magic Staff: A ridiculously huge one, even bigger than he is. His Golem is also sealed inside it.
• Mini Mook: The Minor Imps spawned by Aghanim's Shard-upgraded Upheaval use the same character model as Warlock's Golem, but are smaller and weaker.
• Mucking in the Mud: Warlock's third ability, Upheaval, channels a huge area that slows everything caught in it, and continues to slow them even after the enemy leaves the area or the channel ends. It can even be used to create a dead-zone that can instantly lock down enemies who walk into it after a certain point, since the slow is dependent on how long the spell is channeled rather than how long an enemy stood in its radius (meaning that you can be slowed to the minimum speed if you even put one foot into the whirlpool after it's been going for a few seconds).
• Non-Indicative Name: The "Golem" he summons isn't an actual Golem by any definition of the term, but rather a demon that he summoned and enslaved. It's likely a Mythology Gag referring to his Defense of the Ancients version, whose ultimate summoned an Infernal, an actual golem.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: When casting Shadow Word.
• Playing with Fire: Warlock's Golem burns enemies around it and can deal extra cleave damage when attacking with Flaming Fists.
• Prophet Eyes
• Pungeon Master: He replaces "friend" with "fiend" in much of his dialogue.
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": While Warlock tends to be fairly straitlaced most of the time, he loses his cool once he gets Aghanim's Scepter or Refresher Orb, which allows him to summon two or even four golems instead of one with his ultimate.
  Warlock (summoning multiple demons): "Can you believe this? Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
• The Red Mage: Both literally and figuratively. His second spell, Shadow Word, can either heal or damage, depending on who he casts it on.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: While idle, there is a chance that Warlock will play rock-paper-scissors with his Hellborn Grasp staff, if equipped.
• Scary Librarian: We don't get to see how he runs the Ultimyr archives, but given that he wields powerful dark magic and can summon giant flaming demons at will, it's probably a good idea to be very careful there.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Basically what his Golem is, which he summons at will.
• Summon Magic:
  • Chaotic Offering, which also qualifies as a Dynamic Entry for his Golem as he summons it in a massive, fiery explosion that stuns nearby enemies.
  • If an enemy affected by Fatal Bonds is killed, an imp is summoned in its place, which will attack and explode on a nearby target. With Aghanim's Shard, Warlock can also summon imps while channeling Upheaval.
• Synchronization: Fatal Bonds causes all units linked together to take 25% of whatever damage one of them takes. Generally considered Warlock's most powerful spell since, if you shackle the entire enemy team together, they'll take more than twice the damage from area-of-effect spells that hit them all.
• Taking You with Me: It is likely that his golems can kill you, even after dealing with Warlock himself. In addition, one of his Level 20 Talent allows him to summon one Golem upon death and since the Golem's summoning still inflict stun like Chaotic Offering, that second of inaction can hurt.
• This Cannot Be!: Basically his reactions pre-6.85 if you purged his golem with a Diffusal Blade. One of them is more deadpan, though.
  Warlock (react to his Golem's death via Diffusal Blade): "Really? You just did that?"
• Time Master: Upheaval works by manipulating space-time in an area.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: He dedicated his life to finding such books and seemingly with enough inspirations, now writing his own.
• Wizard Beard
• Wreathed in Flames: Warlock's Golems' Permanent Immolation passively deals damage to all enemies standing next to them.

Zharvakko, the Witch Doctor

"Your bones will make a fine powder."

Voiced by: Tom Chantler

The strange and mysterious being known as Zharvakko knows all about the body's workings, a talent which he uses for healing and harm alike. Not much is known about the Witch Doctor, but his enormous magical knowledge, acquired and mastered over several lifetimes in the island highlands of Arktura, makes him a powerful ally and a fearsome enemy on the battlefield.

The Witch Doctor uses his strange medicines to both heal and harm. His first ability, Paralyzing Cask, allows him to throw a skull filled with paralyzing powder at an enemy, damaging and stunning them. The skull then bounces around to nearby targets, applying its effect to several foes, or re-applying it to the same unlucky ones. When his allies are low on health, the Witch Doctor can use Voodoo Restoration to create a circle of magical healing around himself. As long as the spell is toggled on, nearby allies will continuously regain health, at the cost of Witch Doctor's mana being gradually consumed. Maledict curses enemies in a small area, damaging them regularly. Damaging cursed enemies will increase the curse's effect. Death Ward, Witch Doctor's ultimate ability, causes him to perform a ritualistic dance, summoning a ward which rapidly fires powerful projectiles at nearby foes so long as the dance is not stopped or interrupted. With these abilities, the Witch Doctor can bring health to his allies and pain to his foes, making him a great support hero.

In Dota Underlords, Witch Doctor is a tier 2 hero. His ability, Paralyzing Cask, throws a projectile which stuns and damages a target, then bounces several times between nearby foes.

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• Adaptational Species Change: Was the troll Vol'jin in DotA. Now, he's a...humanoid.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: His skin is purple.
• Ambiguously Human: It's really hard to tell if he's a misshapen human or simply an odd-looking human-like creature. His lore offers no answers, and just points out that nobody knows what he is.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The Death Ward's attacks deal physical damage but bypass damage block, meaning that Vanguard, Crimson Guard and Tidehunter's Kraken Shell cannot reduce its damage.
• Ballistic Bone: The projectile of Paralyzing Cask is a skull filled with paralysing powder.
• Coconut Meets Cranium: When equipped with Bonkers the Mad, when Witch Doctor uses Paralyzing Cask, Bonkers will throw a coconut which, of course, can stun and bounce exactly like the skull that Zharvakko otherwise throws.
• Combat Medic: Voodoo Restoration periodically heals allies around Witch Doctor, and Death Ward deals some of the highest damage in the game.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Maledict deals a pitiful amount of damage by itself, but deals a large amount of bonus damage with each tick depending on the difference in the target's HP between ticks, making it a powerful damage amplification spell, in effect if not in mechanics. However, it can also be countered with large amounts of burst healing between ticks, as the spell only checks on the HP difference rather than damage dealt to the target (meaning that a burst heal that happens at the same time as a damage nuke will essentially make Maledict think that little to no damage was done between the ticks).
• Dance Battler: While channeling Death Ward, Witch Doctor dances along to a drumbeat rhythm.
• Deadly Doctor: He's a magical healer by trade, but with Death Ward and Maledict he's no slouch when it comes to offing his foes.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Maledict has a very thin AoE, low range and a fairly long cast time, making it difficult to land on smart opponents. However, it is a very powerful damage amplification that can decimate any enemy heroes caught in it.
  • As Death Ward is a channelling spell, Witch Doctor needs to try to wait out enemy stuns, have his team disable them, or have suitable equipment to avoid the channelling being broken. In addition, it cannot be repositioned once cast, so Witch Doctor must make sure to use it at the correct time and location (ideally slightly back from the 'centre of gravity' of the fight), and even then, if his team has no AOE disable the enemies can simply run away from it. However, if used correctly and combined with a good setup (like Medusa's Stone Gaze or Faceless Void's Chronosphere), it can deal a whopping 8738 physical damage when maxed (27280 with Aghanim's Scepter), able to dominate teamfights with ease. And that's not counting the extra damage if he hits you with Maledict...
• Dreadlock Rasta: One of the cosmetic unlockables to go with his accent.
• Feather Boa Constrictor: One of Witch Doctor's cosmetic items is Rattlebite, a snake that coils on his shoulder.
• Gonk: His design is very ugly, grotesque and monstrous. Even his backstory notes just how weird he looks.
• Hollywood Voodoo: Zharvakko is an amalgam of Voodoo stereotypes, from his tribal piercings, to his facepaint, his skull and bones motifs, to his exotic accent, to his morally ambiguous attitude.
• Invulnerable Attack: Voodoo Switcheroo temporarily turns Witch Doctor into an invulnerable Death Ward.
• Jungle Drums: When Witch Doctor uses Death Ward when equipped with the cosmetic frog Padda'pon of Ribbi'tar, the frog will appear and start to drum next to the ward itself.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: By purchasing an Aghanim's Scepter, Witch Doctor's ultimate will bounce up to 4 times between targets. This means that if you can catch all five enemy heroes in the area, you can do up to 5 times its rated damage, provided there are no illusions.
• Loincloth: The only clothing he wears is a tattered-looking loincloth.
• Magic Staff: Carries around a branchlike staff decorated with skulls and beads and his abilities are explicitly magical, though he flings magic from his hands with his basic attack.
• Monochromatic Eyes: His eyes are purely white, with no pupil or iris visible.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: He's pretty eager to kill and hurt for a doctor, and several of his voicelines point to a fairly morally ambiguous outlook on his profession.
  Witch Doctor: "Do no harm. Dah! What fun is that?"
  Witch Doctor: Malpractice makes perfect.
• More Dakka: The Death Ward attacks once every 0.22 second, which very few heroes can surpass, meaning that during its lifetime of 8 seconds it can put out 36 attacks (or more if the target is affected by Chen's Penitence).
• Pinball Projectile: Paralyzing Cask bounces from the primary target to nearby foes, stunning multiple enemies (or one multiple times). Death Ward projectiles also bounce if Witch Doctor has put three points in it or buys Aghanim's Scepter.
• Really 700 Years Old: According to his backstory, Witch Doctor has learned magic for several lifetimes.
• The Red Mage: Although mostly valued for the massive damage potential from his ultimate, Witch Doctor can also heal his allies with Voodoo Restoration.
• Savage Piercings: Zharvakko's nose and ears are pierced; he's specifically got the bone through his nose often associated with tribal "savagery."
• Shout-Out:
  • To Left 4 Dead:
  Witch Doctor: "Pills here!"
  • One of his cosmetics is Ol' Snaggletooth, a hat for Team Fortress 2's Sniper.
• Shrunken Head: One of his cosmetic items, the Shrunken Head Staff, is adorned with his mother's head.
• Squishy Wizard: Witch Doctor deals incredible amounts of both physical AND magical damage (most heroes specialize in one or the other, and thus peak at different times in the game) with his spells, and can heal his allies as well. His damage and utility potential is therefore offset by his very low stats, and his huge damage potential and healing means he might as well be walking around with a bullseye over his head. Aghanim's Shard gives him a lifeline in the form of Voodoo Switcheroo, but if that's not enough to get enemies off his back, he's toast.
• Stoners Are Funny: While not explicitly stated, he has a very stereotypical Rasta accent.
  Witch Doctor: "Feeling good, man."
• Top-Heavy Guy: His proportions are strange, as his lore points out; he has disproportionately tiny legs and overly long arms.
• Tribal Face Paint: Witch Doctor wears chalky facepaint, and has similar markings painted over his body, and his design is heavily based in stereotypical tribal flair.
• The Turret Master: His ultimate, Death Ward, summons a magical turret that deals incredible amounts of damage.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: His Aghanim's Shard skill Voodoo Switcheroo temporarily transforms Witch Doctor into a mimic of his Death Ward to turn himself invulnerable, though it has a slower attack speed than his ordinary Death Ward. Granted, having a slightly slower attack speed than the regular Death Ward means it still hurts like hell to stand in range, making Voodoo Switcheroo great for getting enemies off his back.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Downplayed. He neither wears a shirt nor has one available as a cosmetic item, though as the odd-looking creature he is, he's not played for fanservice.
• Weaksauce Weakness: While Death Ward can dominate a teamfight or counterpush, it's also a channeled spell - meaning that if Witch Doctor is stunned, silenced or otherwise interrupted the ward will disappear.
• Witch Doctor: His title, and in his cosmetic items he's got the masks, face and body paint, skulls and bones, shrunken heads, and tribal staff to boot.
• You Are Already Dead: Maledict deals delayed damage based on how much health an enemy lost since the spell cast. If it's instantly followed by burst damage, the target won't be able to escape alive.
  Witch Doctor (finishing off an enemy with Maledict): "Wait for it… waaaait for it… "

Zeus, the Lord of Heaven

"You can't run from heaven!"

Voiced by: Eric Newsome

It is well known that Zeus, Lord of Heaven, has had myriad affairs with countless mortal women, much to the displeasure of his divine wife. Eventually, the goddess gave him a challenge: he was forced to relinquish his immortality and live among mortals, only allowed to regain his immortality if he proved his faithfulness to her on Earth. Now Zeus seeks to win his wife's good graces once again, so he may return by her side in Heaven. To this end, he has entered the War of the Ancients, seeking to prove himelf worthy of his heavenly spouse on the field of battle

Zeus' kit revolves entirely around inflicting huge amounts of magic damage. His first spell, Arc Lightning, fires a damaging electric projectile at a target, which then strikes other nearby foes. Lighting Bolt summons a thunderbolt which mini-stuns and heavily damages a target; it also gives True Sight in a small area and can be targeted at the ground in order to detect invisible units such as wards. Heavenly Jump gives him a short hop forward, like a half-distance force staff, while also shocking nearby heroes and slowing them. His ultimate ability, Thundergod's Wrath, smites all enemy heroes with powerful lighting bolts no matter where they are: the only ways to dodge this are invisibility and spell immunity. Additionally, the spell gives vision and True Sight on all enemies, allowing Zeus to scout the location of the enemy team. With Aghanim's Scepter, Zeus gains an additional ability: Nimbus. This spell can be used to summon a storm cloud at any location on the map, which then casts Zeus' Lightning Bolt on foes who enter its radius. Aghanim's Shard also unlocks an ability for Zeus, the passive Lightning Hands which increases his attack range and causes his attacks to cast Arc Lightning for reduced damage.

In Artifact, Zeus is a blue hero. He has the Static Field reactive ability, which deals 1 piercing damage to his neighbors whenever you play a blue spell, and the signature card Thunder God's Wrath which deals 4 piercing damage to all enemy heroes on the board.

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• Achilles' Heel: A casual Cloak, which is very cheap, is a fairly good counter against Zeus, because it reduces all of his magical damage, which is really all that he has, by a good amount. Black King Bar likewise disables his damage output almost entirely while active, and almost every carry gets Black King Bar.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Lightning Hands can be toggled off if you don't want the effect to trigger, which can be useful when Blade Mail is involved.
• Art Evolution: After a long time of using his alpha model and ability icons, Zeus finally received an updated model and ability icons in the Balance of Power update to match the current art style.
• Black Mage: Zeus' entire kit revolves around dishing out as much magical damage as possible.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: He's Zeus, after all; smiting enemies with lightning is his specialty. This is more clearly represented by Thundergod's Wrath, which hits everyone all over the map and reveals all invisible heroes.
• Brought Down to Badass: He may no longer be in his full godly glory but heaven help you if you face his wrath.
• The Casanova: Well, he's Zeus after all. According to his lore, this bit him in the ass and was the cause of his participation in the battle between the Radiant and the Dire. Apparently Hera has had enough of his womanizing, and challenged him to prove his devotion to her.
• Chain Lightning: Arc Lightning jumps from target to target, dealing damage.
• Crippling Overspecialization: All of Zeus' abilities are magical nukes, and he provides little utility other than scouting and detecting invisible units with Lightning Bolt and Thundergod's Wrath. The reason why his Aghanim's Scepter upgrade was reworked (from increasing the damage of the 90-second cooldown Thundergod's Wrath by 165 at level 3 to giving him access to Nimbus) was because it further exaggerated this trope by making Zeus even more dependent on his ultimate, especially when the much cheaper Aether Lens and Veil of Discord can do the same thing while also boosting the rest of his damage. And then there are people who go for Aghanim's Scepter AND Refresher Orb, turning Zeus into little more than a walking double ultimate since he won't have the HP to survive in teamfights, nor the mana to spam his first two skills.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Arc Lightning does relatively little damage, even at level 4. However, it has a very low cooldown, and fairly low mana cost, which means that it can be cast often enough to farm with it if you're careful, and can be almost continuously cast at higher levels, whittling down your enemy's health a bit at a time (especially when paired with Lightning Hands from his shard). It's percentage-based damage (the only thing left over from the old Static Field ability) makes it continue to deal decent damage, even in the late game.
• Defog of War: Lightning Bolt gives True Sight around the target, and can even be cast on the ground, making it an excellent dewarding tool. Thundergod's Wrath also reveals all enemy heroes on cast, allowing Zeus to scout with it if he doesn't need the damage too much (i.e. in the late game).
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Until late 2015, Zeus was one of the few heroes in the game who retained his alpha model, textures and icons long after the art style had evolved greatly.
• Energy Weapon: The Immortal weapon Righteous Thunderbolt is a literal bolt of lightning that Zeus carries in his hand.
• Flying on a Cloud: Or as the game calls it, a tempest-cloud chariot for His Majesty, when he wears his Arcana helmet.
• Glass Cannon: Zeus has mediocre Strength, pathetic Agility, and little mobility after he uses Heavenly Jump, but that doesn't mean a whole lot if he zaps you to death before you can get close.
• Glowing Eyes: It's even the icon for Static Field.
• Grandpa God: Most depictions of Zeus take the form of old men, and this one is no exception.
• Heavenly Blue: The Top God of Heaven who dresses in white and blue and smites enemies with blue lightning bolts.
• Henpecked Husband: His lore implies that he can't refuse Hera's logic and is pretty much acting less of an ass (although some old habits may pop up occasionally) just to prove himself worthy to his wife again.
• Holier Than Thou: "Yes, I am holier than thou."
• Hope Spot: You've just barely managed to escape a gank or teamfight, and are limping back to your fountain with a fraction of your HP left. Suddenly... THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE.
• Hypocrite: He's an obvious egomaniac. He also can't stand them. Especially blatant with how he treats Invoker:
  Zeus (upon killing Invoker): "If there's anything I can't abide, it's an egomaniac."
• In a Single Bound: If Zeus is moving forward when he uses Heavenly Jump, he'll jump towards that direction 450 distance.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He may be a womanizing egomaniac extraordinaire, but the entire reason he's fighting in the first place is to prove himself faithful to his wife.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to the original myth, this Zeus is pretty much a 'nicer' version, he's something of a Henpecked Husband to Hera, he isn't that much wrathful, as his lines seems to have the tone of having much fun like the rest. There are implications of his original selves, but his more questionable actions are usually glossed over.
• Kill Sat: Thundergod's Wrath (and Nimbus to a lesser degree) is a supernatural variation of this.
• Kill Steal: Among the fandom, he's renowned for killstealing. This is because Thundergod's Wrath hits every (non-spell immune, non-invisible) hero on the map for a huge amount of damage, so if he uses it when an enemy (usually one being ganked and chased by his teammates) is at low health, it will all but guarantee the kill to him (this also happens inadvertently all the time; Zeus is just trying to finish off his own target, and yours happened to be so low on health that he accidentally took them out as well). It's usually not a good idea, though, as a lot of the damage is wasted on heroes that aren't doing anything more dangerous than farming or warding, and in the long run it basically pools money to a hero that doesn't scale well with farm anyway.
• Long-Range Fighter: Zeus has relatively high cast ranges on all of his abilities (global range in the case of his ultimate and Nimbus), allowing him to fry enemies from long range. Nimbus' ministun also means that an observant Zeus can interrupt channeled attacks from anywhere on the map. However, his lack of anything other than magic damage makes him relatively vulnerable up close.
• Mage Marksman: Lightning Hands, his Aghanim's Shard ability, causes Zeus to cast a weaker Arc Lightning on every attack, which means a lot of free area-of-effect damage for pushing, teamfighting, and flash-farming, and it even works on illusions so Manta Style is a legitimate item choice on him.
• Mundane Utility: Zeus' ultimate hits every enemy hero on the map for damage. It also shows every enemy hero, even if they're invisible (though they take no damage). If the enemy has not been seen for too long, Zeus can "waste" his ulti to show where they are. More than one gank has been ruined because Zeus used his ulti as part of his spell rotation to finish off a target, and ended up revealing the gathering ambush somewhere else.
• Percent Damage Attack: Arc Lightning and Thundergod's Wrath zap targets for a percentage of their current and max HP respectively.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: Zeus' entire skillset revolves around dishing out as much magical damage as possible - all four of his skills are some variation of 'do damage', while his autoattacks are weak and scale badly, making him easily counterable by buying anti-magic items like Black King Bar or Pipe of Insight - even a cheap Cloak can become very useful. His only escape mechanism is Heavenly Jump, which is decent, but only gives him a short boost (force staff pushes you much further) and slows one enemy near him. Fortunately, it prioritizes heroes, and a talent makes it hit two.
• Power Floats: With the Tempest Helm of the Thundergod, Zeus floats on a thundercloud on the ground.
• Public Domain Character: He's none other than Zeus, king of the gods from Greek mythology.
• Shock and Awe: Taken to ludicrous levels. All of his abilities are some variant of "strike enemies with lightning", and with Aghanim's Shard, even his basic attacks cast lightning bolts, effectively giving him a discount Maelstrom.
• Spam Attack: His entire skillset is based around simply spamming out as many lightning bolts as possible. The only thing that makes this anything other than overglorified button mashing is that he needs to target his abilities, and even then, his primary spammed ability Arc Lightning pretty much hits everyone in a forty-foot radius of the target anyway and Lightning Bolt can snap to nearby targets when ground-targeted, so aiming isn't terribly important. With Aghanim's Shard, building attack speed and even Manta Style on him also becomes a legitimate tactic - when every attack casts Arc Lightning, even a modest Hyperstone yields a big increase in area damage.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Since Lightning Bolt is one of the few skills that grants True Sight, Zeus can work as a support when the enemy team has an invisible hero. For a support, Zeus needs a lot of gold and experience, but can completely shut down heroes such as Techies and the occasional Riki.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Zeus' kit is centered around dealing as much magical damage as possible at the expense of most utility - to the point that he nearly always ends up as the hero who deals the most damage to enemy heroes in teamfights, even if played as a support^note this is due to the fact that almost all of his abilities hit multiple targets at once, or at least can be talented to do so in the case of Lightning Bolt.
• Volcanic Veins: With the Tempest Helm of the Thundergod Arcana, lightning can be seen crackling over Zeus' skin.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: His Arcana set includes an item named Thundergod's Bare Chest (and Thundergod's Bare Arms), most likely to accentuate the Volcanic Veins from the main item, the Tempest Helm of the Thundergod.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Zeus's plans A through Z are "Lightning", lots and lots of it.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: Blue, like most lightnings in the game.
• You Can Run, but You Can't Hide: You can't run from heaven, indeed.
  • Thundergod's Wrath is perfect to finish off fleeing enemies and scout enemies' positions, as it reveals every hero on the map and deals moderate damage.
  • Zeus can target the ground with Lightning Bolt, which will seek the closest hero within a 250 radius. It can hit invisible heroes while both damaging and revealing them.
  • Once he has Aghanim's Scepter, Zeus gains access to Nimbus, another global nuke that is also the only way to interrupt channelled abilities (most notably Town Portal scrolls) from anywhere on the map.

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