Laning Discussion: Warlock Mid

Warlock is a very versatile support; possessing a heal, DoT, slow, and an AoE stun. As such, he is an extremely strong laner/harrasser. In addition, his lasthitting isn't too shabby with a much better attack animation than most other supports. As such, he is quite viable as a mid hero, since he can safely farm while keeping the enemy mid zoned and perhaps getting a solo kill here and there.

The purpose of this discussion, though, is where he is good as a mid hero. I personally prefer him as a mid for the above reasons, and since he is so XP dependent and also fairly dependent on items (mana, mobility, agh's, etc.) Most of you will say that most other heroes can make much better use of the mid position, but I would tend to disagree. I think that such common mid heroes as Outworld Devourer, Templay Assassin, and even Queen of Pain could be much more useful in the offlane position, where they can keep the carry Astral Imprisonmented, Psi Bladesed, and Shadow Striked to oblivion. In this way, you can give a lot of the necessary gold and XP to your mid Warlock, while keeping the enemy carry under control. Thoughts?

Warlock mid is great in a pushing lineup because it's extremely hard to deal with an Aghanim's Scepter level 2 Chaotic Offering pushing your towers 15-20 minutes into the game. Warlock is one of the best deathball heroes since he wins most mid matchups (he can even reliably beat Templar Assassin and Queen of Pain, that's saying something) and can group up early with his team and push down some towers.

However, if you're not running a pushing lineup, mid Warlock does nothing that support Warlock doesn't do just as well, since past the early-mid game support Warlock as access to Aghs, max Fatal Bonds and Upheaval just as much...so has exactly the same teamfight presence.
So if you don't intend to push early, you're just taking some useless space from your team by AFK farming mid instead of abusing Shadow Word to win your safe lane.

So, legit in a coordinated pushing lineup, just don't do this in solo queue unless you make it very clear that you're going full push and your team doesn't have AFK ricers like Anti-Mage (if you DO have AFK ricers, go safe lane support without question insetad).

He's actually one of the strongest mid's in the game. Shadow Word means he struggles to lose a lane by dying, and taking early points in stats early mean you have enough damage to last hit easily, as well as deny pretty freely. Likewise Shadow Word then becomes one of the best harrassing tools in the game. I think the only hero who can really beat him in lane reliably is Outworld Devourer, but he's like the strongest laner in the game so.

Hamster basically summed it up otherwise. It's good when you can organise and commit to pushing, and just leveraging early advantage to close a game out fast before golem's drop off. (The hero is still aight at all stages, because Upheval and Fatal Bonds scale well, and the Golem's with refresher is still a massive AOE BKB piercing stun, which is always relevent). If you can't rely on closing games early, you should just pick a more all purpose mid like QoP.

But I disagree with support Warlock nowadays. Unless you are a really greedy 4 position who gets a well timed Midas (Which lets you get levels and items at a reliable pace then), he requires too much farm and EXP to be really efficient.

He does need farm and levels, but Chaotic Offering is one of the best farm accelerators in the game...doesn't even need midas to get rich.
Everytime you ult, you get 300-700 gold from killing lane creeps, jungle creeps, heroes, towers...
You just need to micro the golems during their entire uptime...they farm ridicullously fast.
Besides, like any hero with a long cooldown ult, you can just farm when your ult is down.

ive always thought support Warlock is trash apart from very VERY specific situations, where the game needs to hit multiple criteria that allows Upheaval to do its magic, and those beginner/low mmr games where there arent really any roles because supports end up just as farmed as cores.
The hero does nothing in the laning stage but try to get levels. he has no kill potential, he cant gank at all.
unless Upheaval is very usefull you are playing a support Queen of Pain without the dagger slow, blink and burst.

Golem singular until you have Ag's.

And you won't go straight Ag's as a support, you'll go Midas because you want to get levels as much as you want the gold, because you want to have level 3 golems fast. And to ensure you'll actually get an okay timing on the Ag's

Which means that as a support, you get a slow Ag's, and thus a really slow Ag's refresher, thus you'll have them by the time enemy probably has a Diffusal Blade or two to in part counter you, which is sad times all around.

Now as Timm says, as a support lock, you can't really rotate and gank from the off, because sure you've got a high damage dot ability, but your lockdown for rotations is sub par unless you are responding to dives. Which means your pressure on the map as a team is lower, which means the enemy get more from the map than they would otherwise, and thus transition into the mid-game better. Like sure, the offlaner will have a rough time, but you just pick-up something like QoP or ES, who'll stick get expierence and some degree of gold from the lane, before making **** happen elsewhere which is all you'd want from that lane.

So he'd have to make **** happen in the id-game, at a level and farm defect, otherwise he's just been a hero whose compromised your own lanes.

I agree with Sanvitch. I believe that Warlock is one of the weakest position 4's or 5's, and should be given higher farming priority than that. My mid build goes as follows (which a support Warlock could never achieve) Boots of Speed --> Situational Bottle/ Soul Ring --> Hand of Midas --> Arcane Boots (if having mana problems)/ Tranquil Boots (if having health and movespeed problems)/ Phase Boots (if having lasthit problems) --> Aghanim's Scepter --> Optional Blink Dagger/ Force Staff --> Refresher Orb

I've very happy running Warlock as a support. If you forget about Aghanim's Scepter as a thing that just isn't go to happen, or isn't going to be worth it by the time it does happen.

Yes, he is quite level dependent early on, but he's actually pretty item independent too. I can quite happily run him on Boots of Speed and an Urn of Shadows for most of the game - yes, all the other gear you can get on him is nice, and helpful, but you don't NEED it to be effective.

Why? All your spells have massive range and AOE, so provided you get off Chaotic Offering and Fatal Bonds then the rest is just gravy. You don't need mobility equipment with these spells. His int and str growth is good too. (2.7 and 2.5 respectively)

The big challenge I think when picking him as a support is having appropriate options to go with him - he can zone and heal very effectively, but isn't particularly brilliant at roaming or killing without strong allies. He's also pretty vulnerable to high burst and mobility...not sure if I'd really want him tri-vs-tri either.

Still, he's a very effective harasser, and many people massive underrate how good Upheaval can be early game - we're talking about up to 84% slow for up to 19 seconds (!). Offlaners without escapes are in serious danger.

Overall, yes he is a slightly risky and slightly greed pickup, but he's also a pretty solid pickup if opposition choices leave a gap for him.