Baiting the lesh?

So everyone knows lesh is really really strong atm. but i have an idea to break him over my leg.

bait the pick.

so the idea is for captains mode but basically.

Anti mage. super strong hero against storm and lesh. my idea is this:

it only works if they have first pick but ban blood and undying but not lesh this leaves them to pick him they think WTF they havent banned lesh quick pick him!

so now you insta pick ES and AM they think sweet they have an AM so they go aggro tri with a solo safer. you pick a strong semi carry laner. like luna and a strong sustain support like witch or lich. then your ES is in the solo offlane. sofar you have sayyy Witch and Luna and Am and ES.... now heres the kicker.

pick IO and run him mid with AM against the LESH... yup! no battlefury AM his build is rush manta and vlads then into bkb and basher.

so its Witch, AM, IO, ES, Luna...


with AM-IO mid against the lesh.

thoughts?

Hehe...people finally start picking Anti-Mage to actually bring a downfall to magic...and not just to kill creeps.

I kind of thought this when the patch came out.

The question is : is Anti-Mage the best hero if you want a mid-game brawler against magic.

I mean, in comparison to, say, Templar Assassin, Huskar, Lifestealer, Lone Druid, Doom, Pugna...

This is an open question...how to bring an end to magic.

Personally I'd still go with TA if I wanted to wreck a mid Lesh. But I won't deny that Io + Anti-Mage sounds fun :)

Lesh would do quite well against multiple opponents, thanks to Lightning Storm? Not sure, might take a few levels for AM to build his resistance.

He is pretty obnoxious at the moment as it's very difficult to fight back against the LS spam. Viper maybe? Puck? Pugna definitely seems worth a look (Lesh does more damage to himself than you at level 1 LS), but he does lock into a certain playstyle.

Huskar...maybe, hard to see Lesh coming in to harassment range, early zerker's blood might be pretty useful though, but you've got to live with being on low health.

Omniknight counters every hero… problem solved.

Lesh would still get a ton of farm, as io AM lane poses no threat for him.
Having AM and luna on the same is extremely greedy. Both of them tend to take farm from the whole map, which means other 3 heroes will be extremely poor.
Also, since they need a lot of farm, enemy team could just go for a pushing strat since they already have a lesh.
I don't think this would work really well...

If you want to counter lesh, pick lina or pugna. Nether ward ruins his laning and lina is just as strong as lesh at mid. BUT lesh can't kill lina later (considering she will build a bkb) and lina can still kill him.

Lesh can also just Dodge AM and farm safe lane instead. It's not as good as farming him mid, but it still works.

Then the enemy team is free to pick-up something like QoP or SF or Lina for the mid. Heroes which wouldn't be that scared of this Io combinatation and can probably mean you get less efficient farm than you should do. And will definately punish you mid-late game.

And you'd still want to build BF here. Like, I get that you don't want to be this ratty kind of Anti-Mage, but all you've done for your item build is just have an AM's build without a BF. And he'll farm it really slowly. And thus you'll only be ahead of your opponents if you are balling, which is bad because Leshrac can still catch-up and get ahead due to having massive amounts of flash farm, which means suddenly you are behind Leshrac and even with spell shield, that's not a good thing.

I get that you want to try and out-smart the Lesh pick, but the issue is heroes nowadays are so versatile that you can still adjust at the last pick to make things a little better. I think it's better just to pick someone who contests him a lot in lane to slow him down significantly. Even if he will catch-up, it's still really beneficial because it lets you get something of an item lead. Plus the laners that contest him also do really well against him later on.

EDIT; I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it's really hard to bait a pick like Leshrac. Because he's got laning versatility, and is a pretty decent all around choice. (He's got push, flash farm, burst, little bit of cc ect ect), it's really hard to make people think; Oh I wish we'd pick X instead of our first pick Lesh, which would be the aiming of bait picking surely?

Lesh won't care about AM + Wisp lane at all, because they won't even be able to come close to him, and if they try to they will just get rekt by 2 spells. AM's don't level up passive early, Wisp is always easy food for nukers like Leshrac. There are solo picks that could handle Lesh better than these two, mainly heroes with wave clear like SF and Lina.

Honestly though... I almost insta-lock Puck against Lesh. His horrible animation is so easy to dodge, it's not even funny.

Lesh really wants to play from ahead, so even if you break even in the lane, take away his jungle and you'll do fine.

If you've been watching Kuro stream, one time SyndereN asks Kuro why he picks Razor into Leshrac. Apparently Kuro strongly believes that Razor beats Lesh mid. Just a thought . :)

they can just run support Leshrac