Gift of the DreamMasters Draft (What the fuck is this?)

I'm back with another draft, and this one is probably the most experimental and weirdest one yet. I wrote about it up in 6.83, back when Troll Warlord was still the terror of Dota 2 and not the Has-Been he is now. Basically, it features a powerful set of womboing, and some oddness.. in it's choice of safelaner. Also, it's thematic, because Siren puts em to sleep, Puck Casts Dream Coil, and Sand King is the sand man, except he puts them to sleep permanently... by killing them.

1 - Mid Naga Siren
2 - Safe Sand King
3 - Offlane Puck
4 - Disruptor
5 - Ancient Apparition

I feel like I may have instantly lost you. Alright, that's fine. In my recent games as SK, I've found that his laning has gotten pretty severely improved. I also notice that an SK that people try to shut down from solo jungling is almost completely useless. So basically, this safelane choice is to secure the early of SK, make sure he gets that Dagger at great timing, with stacking or harassing supports. And then once Siren gets Radiance, SK is not gonna be doing any more significant farming. Siren sucks up all the farm on the map, and with safelane SK, like with having a safelane Slardar, it's okay, you're already relevant.

The combo goes very simply. Song, Static Storm, Dream Coil, Ice Blast, Epicenter. Song means a guaranteed Static Storm, and with Aghs, there will be no hope of activating BKBs or Glimmer Capes either. However, the team can also deal well with splitpushers due to the splitpush of Naga Siren and Sand King to a lesser extent, as well at the ability to break the "splitpusher vs splitpusher statemales" on the other side of the map with Ancient Apparition's ice blast.

And as with all my drafts, there are potential replacements for heroes. The most obvious ones are for Sand King's safelane. Heroes like Slardar to mix up the damage output of the team while still being okay with beign less farmed. Leshrac is good too due to his higher sustained damage. Kunkka and Shadow Fiend also work due to having good teamfight spells that can be set up by the Song, while scaling better into late game. Elder Titan can also be picked up as a support or offlaner due to his ability to amplify magic damage, and get a good earth splitter off easily with Song. Zeus can also be picked for more damage dominance, whether as a core or support, especially due to saving money on dewarding and dealing with invis heroes. Timbersaw also works in offlane for higher sustained damage, like Leshrac.

For heroes to ban, most obviously is Silencer, because of his ability to break combos. Pugna is also an important ban, what with countering the massive mana spending of the heroes of this draft, preventing epicenter blink, and killing Naga illusions once Aghs is acquired. And finally, Rubick, because overspecializing with magic damage can be disastrous with the Null Field and all.

... I think the draft is fine... the lanes are a bit weird.

Like, what about Naga Siren safe, Puck mid, and Sand King offlane?

You don't need the Puck when you have a Disruptor, Kinetic Field is good enough to replace Dream Coil.

You might want a Queen of Pain instead, or a Faceless Void.

If you want to make a teamfight combo based on setting up stuff with Song of the Siren, I think it's best to play Naga as a support and not as a core.

Core Naga commits you to a constant ricing and rat dota playstyle...not the best synergy with the other picks.

Laning Sand King is still pretty meh IMO. If you want to lane a hero who deals lots of AOE damage, Venomancer, Invoker or something sound way better.
It's not that laning SK is bad, it's just, it doesn't play to his strengths at all.

Sand King's big strength is his ability to jungle as a support and get a fast blink. Jungling SK can't be shut down, even if he gets delayed with ganks he still gets his blink way before 12 minutes...it changes nothing really.
It's nothing like Earthshaker, where ganking the ES trying to farm his blink can put off his blink timing by a huge amount. SK gets his blink early anyways.

Shadow Fiend, Kunkka, Warlock, Gyrocopter, Undying or something in the safelane is better IMO.

The draft idea is really nice though.

I dislike the idea of safe-lane Sand King because as people have said he's strong because he's a really fast jungler. He only needs access to two camps really to get his blink timing, and it's really hard to block out all of the camps in a jungle (Even then, he just spends the three minutes rotating around threateningly instead, and ocassionally saps some EXP)

Like, safe-lane farmers don't need to be strong laners. But they need to be heroes that want a large amount of farm and levels in a given line-up that they won't get in another position.

I would rather have a Leshrac, because he gives the line-up pushing potential, and the ability to pressure things somewhat early (Thus creating space for the Naga Siren.

I'd also agree support Naga Siren is probably better here, especially in combination with an AA (Like, that's a terrifying rotating combo as they get levels (Essentially give that duo level 2 and they can get a kill whenever they want), and they even have natural progression as and when they get kills).

Likewise Puck offlane is not an offlane you should be aiming for, because it only works against weak lanes, or ones with little CC, because you are pretty greedy for an offlaner. I'd rather have him mid.

What I'd do is; 1 position Leshrac
Mid Puck
Offlane Dark Seer
AA and Naga Siren as a support duo, with the intention to shift Naga Siren into a core position.

You still have the synergy with Song of the Siren for combo's, but your lanes have more pressure (SK is a pretty passive hero till he gets Blink Dagger), and are just stronger (Like, you can go aggro-tri, you can dual lane (Because Naga Siren + Surge + Ion Shell is disgusting early on), you can put Lesh mid, and shift Puck to the safe lane ect ect), you have better push, and you still have amazing late-game because 3 of your heroes scale amazingly into the late game, and the other two are still really solid. You are also just a little less reliant on the combo to win fights, because all of them are decent skirmishing heroes.

Offlane Magnus, not Puck, because this relies on getting them all into the area of Static Storm. Also he can empower the Naga. Also Mist Coil isnt really needed.

Hmmm, perhaps a Dream Coil may be redundant in the face of Disruptor's combo. Maybe an Elder Titan might be a good choice. He's also a "dreammaster" since he can put people to sleep.

There are quite a lot of interesting variations on this draft that may work conventionally, like Magnus, Leshrac, Dark Seer, and Support Siren, especially since you can make use of the awesome Aghs.


Also, I've not tested offlane SK in 6.84. He's actually quite threatening to melee lane farmers with the new caustic, and will force the enemy to put at least one support on him, which if he got Ring of Protection, it should not be a big deal, while his own supports stack his jungle, since he doesn't jungle efficiently until his storm is at least level 2. So in other words, his early can be like a Batrider's. I have to test it out. If that's the case, maybe a simple lane rotation of Mid Puck, Safe Naga, and Off SK might really work and make the draft a lot less risky.