Dealing with broken and overpicked heroes (6.83)

Hello bois,

I've seen a lot of posts here complaining about OP heroes in the current patch. OP standing either for overpowered or overpicked, sometimes both.
Truth is, I completely agree with you. I think the game balance right now is not very good. So people all pick the same heroes over and over again just because they're ****ing broken...so yes the streams I watch right now are essentially reduced to "pick Troll Warlord and Storm Spirit, win game". I have yet to see a single team with both Troll and Storm lose.

So I made this thread to gather a list of tricks to deal with the current broken and overpicked heroes, just so that you can rek those tryhard Troll and Storm pickers.
I'm gonna be honest, the only way to beat tryhards is to be tryhard yourself. You need to counterpick them, there's no other way...until Icefraud gives them a well deserved nerf.

== Troll Warlord ==

Since the Fervor buff, he now has *permanent maximum attack speed*. So he builds only tank items like SnY and Skadi and can still out-DPS anyone. And his laning presence is stupidly strong as well.

Troll punishes melee carries extremely hard, both with the axes and with the bash. Nukers are pretty worthless against him as well since he only builds tank items, so he's actually stupidly tanky. Trick to beating him is kiting him with a ranged carry, or having a melee carry who can dispel the miss chance.

- Ranged Eye of Skadi carriers : Morphling, Weaver, Clinkz, Medusa, Sniper. All these are good because they can slow him through BKB and kite him.
(just beware that Sniper is not that good against him later in the game since Troll is a natural blink carrier)

- Heavy slows : Viper, Venomancer, Shadow Demon, Lich, Drow Ranger... A slow Troll is a useless Troll since you can kite him easily.

- Beat yourself up : Winter Wyvern, Shadow Demon, Dark Seer : have Troll hit himself and his allies for a change.

- Heavy AOE lockdown : Enigma, Magnus, Winter Wyvern, Treant Protector... Troll is not that good in teamfights so these heroes can punish him in big engagements. Omniknight also.
Elder Titan also deserves a mention because Natural Order. A Troll with no armor dies really fast.

- Heavy single target lockdown : Bane, Tinker, Naga Siren, Legion Commander (with blademail) : hold him in place and have your carry beat him up.

- Melee carries with dispels. Slark can Dark Pact off the miss chance. Phantom Lancer can dispel the miss chance with Doppelganger and Troll can't deal with the illusion swarm. Any melee carry with Manta Style is good against him for this reason, dispel the axes.

== Storm Spirit ==

Does that really need an explanation? He got a huge series of direct and indirect buffs ( Ball Lightning range, Bloodstone buff from Soul Ring, 5-man push being nerfed to the ground...) meaning that he can essentiall walk the map all mid-game and solo kill whatever he wants. Autowin pick unless counterpicked.

- Best support is Disruptor. Glimpse into Static Storm completely owns him and he can't do anything about it. And if he initiates on you you can just Glimpse him back. Don't forget to use Thunder Strike to keep vision of him. And when he buys BKB you can still initiate on him with Aghanims Static Storm (100% reliable if you have a Euls or shivas to Kinetic Field him in). Buying blink helps also.

- Doom, Bane, Lion, Shadow Shaman, Night Stalker, Skywrath Mage : "**** you" silences and disables are just what you need.

- Best carry is probably Anti-Mage, since Mana Void completely oneshots a low mana Storm. Heroes like Phantom Assassin or Phantom Lancer are also good because they can chase him around.

- For mid counters, Queen of Pain wins the lane and can get a fast orchid, Night Stalker destroys him, Skywrath Mage mid counters him from early to late game. outworld devourer and Templar Assassin wreck him in lane but not that much later in the game.

===

I made this in the heat of the moment. I can do other heroes like Axe if needed. I think I've covered Sniper and Slark in my guide already.

Do Rupture or Mana Leak do anything to Storm Spirit when he's using Ball Lightning?

As far as i know you are magic immune during Ball Lightning, but Rupture goes through magic immunity. So, Rupture works, Mana Leak doesn't.

No. Both spells do literally nothing. Storm is invulnerable during his ulti so he can't take any damage or lose mana. Keeper of the Light and Bloodseeker are pretty useless against Storm.
Invulnerability is immunity to everything, not just magic immunity. Balance boys.
Same thing don't bother with Pugna Nether Ward because he takes no damage from it.

BS isn't totally useless against storm, he does have a 6-second aoe silence in Blood Rite, he just needs proper set up. Perhaps Eul's on Bloodseeker is a possibility?

I've found that MKB helps against Troll.

I've also found that Storm is countered by Naga Siren.

Yes, but he can't land it. Storm will just ball away as soon as he sees the effect.

Even with Euls, he'll ball away as soon as Euls ends. Euls BS is legit but it won't really help you against heroes like Storm.

Only set-up that would work is Blink Dagger + Scythe of Vyse on BS. But at that point just pick Sky or something.

Shadow Shaman deserves mentioning for countering storm since he's has about 8 seconds worth of lockdown with Hex and Shackles, maybe get Blink Dagger on shaman so he can jump storm, hex before he can ball away and follow up with shackles. Just make sure you have someone with you who can actually burst him down.

True, he now has his place next to Bane and Lion.



How? He can just ball out of net, or even disjoint the net. And Naga is a rat dota hero and Storm is really good against rat dota.

I don't think you can counter the hero entirely by another heroes, especially if we talk about Storm, who can get in and out of the fight an any moment. I think you should mention team compositions.

Like against Stom Spirit it's best to use something like semi-deatball strat: you pick good teamfight heroes with disables(so they can gank as well), roll over the map, try to take all the T2s, and stop, because Strom Spirit would have gotten Bloodstone by that time and no need to die on highround and feed him charges. You use this space to help your carry get some items to siege the highround - with map control he can farm more or less safely even with Storm Spoirit on enemy team.