Drafting Warlock

I was watching Dota Cinema's dual lane challenge today where syderen and sunsfan were playing Warlock and Visage and it reminded me, that Warlock is an actual hero in this game. I rarely see this hero be it in pubs or watching pro games to the point that he's a myth, kinda like the lochness monster or big foot.

So, where does Warlock fit into the meta and what lineups would he be best suited for? Also, is he a farming core, support, better for dual lanes, tri-lanes ,solo-lanes or what is his "role" so to speak?

He's really greedy, but since this "intra-team welfare" kicked in, Warlock is really good this patch. Easy Aghanim's Scepter into Refresher Orb.

Run him mid solo or run him dual lane support. Don't run him in a trilane, being underleveled is not an option for him.

Draft him under 2 conditions.

1. The game will go late, as Fatal Bonds is insane late and Warlock with Refresher allows it to fully stack with itself (3 times if you go Octarine Core).

2. Of course, if there will be teamfights. He cannot be picked early for this. He does not work in a gank based or rat based game. Deathballing or Turtling is what you want him for.

And he's also a counter to teams that are mostly melee, because Upheaval limits that mobility madly, except Centaur, don't pick him against centaur.

Came to say things, read this post, i have nothing to add. All of this 100%.

Ive said it before and ill say it again. Warlock is a core not a support. He needs a ****ton of levels and even farm to be effective. And preferably be ahead of the opponent.
He doesnt do anything earlygame and is easy food for a mobile opponent.

BUT HE IS SUCH A GOOD BABYSITTER CAUSE HEAL!!
Ok then WTF is a babysitter? Someone who protects you carry and enables him to farm? Well warlock doesnt do that.
You can get an advantage by killing your opponent, zoning your opponent, or having a duo that just zones the opponent because they are so deadly that the offlaner cant show himself. The only thing warlock does decent is zoning.
And im not even going to talk about scenarios where he is up against a strong dual or trilane.

But if your lane gets owned you can atleast keep your carry on full Hp right?
Well sure but what does it do? Now your carry cant lasthit while on full HP instead of not lasthit while on sometimes not full HP?
Atleast if you are a proper support you can be usefull in another way on the map. Warlock cant rotate at all.

The only times i saw a support warlock do good was a long time ago where i played in very low level pubs back when his ult impact did damage, and in one professional game http://www.gosugamers.net/dota2/tournaments/6497-red-bull-battle-grounds-playoffs/1736-finals/6500-match/matches/74662-invictus-gaming-vs-team-secret?vod=36996 where secret has an immobile all in pushing team, and IG managed to stop most of the early agression.


So either play him as a safelane carry or a mid.
Personally i like how MVP.march played him. Warlock core was played a bit around DAC, but kinda disappeared after that when sniper, troll and jugger became more popular.

What Timm said ^

I played warlock support and saw it played. You don't need items to own. Just lvl 6 and some points in fatal bond and upheaval completely destroy in teamfights.
The way to play him imo is 4 position with a mid that can start roaming at 6 (like Storm or Qop) so that you can leech your 6 in mid and continue to deathball away.

Warlock is a good core...in a pushing lineup. That's it.

So unless you're playing a 5-stack and you intend to group up at the 10 minute mark to deathball the enemy towers...core Warlock in pubs is really terrible.

He can't gank or snowball in any way. He can't help you win your other lanes. He needs to make plays in the 10-25 minute window because if you just want the teamfight presence of the hero support Warlock does it just as well so you get literally nothing from playing him mid. Core Warlock comes online sooner for early pushing...that's the only difference.

So core Warlock is pretty much Pugna, go full push in the 10-25 min window because nobody can teamfight you into lvl 2 golems + bonds, and take all the outer towers. So this is a 5-stack thing only.

So don't start going Warlock mid in solo queue pubs, unless your team is willing to group up and push early (and has the heroes for it), it's just going to suck hard.

You didnt say anything about support warlock so i dont know what you think about that, but anything you said about his weaknesses is obviously much worse if you play him as a support.
And you underestimate his power later in the game, farmed int heroes can do massive amounts of work, especially when they have a spell called fatal bonds.

I've only played Warlock as a result of a Random.

That said, he seems to be a good counter-initiator. When they jump in to engage, you can instantly drop Chaotic Offering which goes through the inevitable magic immunity from Black King Bar.

Extremely greedy though and requires quite a bit in terms of gold and exp, which is why I don't think he's a support and should be a third core.