Drafting

I thought tiny was a good pick. While a sven does carry harder than a Tiny, Tiny comes online faster and can contribute more to early fights than a sven. Tiny is a also a better pusher in general, which he mentioned was another reason he picked tiny.

That invoker knew how to dodge hooks?

Jokes aside, i did say a support pudge was a perfectly fine way of playing him.

It's actually quite easy to play defensively against a Pudge whether he's going for you or not. If anything, you should get closer to the Creep Wave, not sit back! You don't have to know whether he's going for you, you just need to watch your Positioning.

If you stand near the Creep Wave, you're Blocking off roughly half the possible places you can be Hooked from. If you're directly behind your Creep Wave, that makes it near impossible to be Hooked under his Tower. You just have to watch for Gaps in the Creep Wave that you can be Hooked through.

With a Tower behind you, that blocks off a bit more. Now all you need to do is watch the sides and any Gaps in the Creep Wave. That leaves 2 or 3 good Spots for you to be Hooked from:- usually the Left if you're under your own Tower, or the Right if you're closer to his. This is because it takes less time to get into a good Hook position from the Left due the the stairs being closer to the Towers on both sides. If you don't see him for more than 10 seconds, he may be taking the long route round to the right to Hook you from the Trees.

You have to be more careful in the river and at night since you lose vision of the high ground, and the Radiant Ancient Camp should always bee a concern.


Again, there's no reason for TA to get Hooked at lvl2. During daytime, you should be spending most of your time standing at the top of the stairs, only going to the river when you have to for Last Hits.

Even better, on Radiant side TA can leave the Lane for a short while to Stack Ancient Camps. All she has to do is confirm that she can't be Hooked while walking uphill or, if needs be, take the long route round. Losing a few Last Hits in Lane isn't going to matter once she starts clearing Ancient Stacks

Once you hit lvl6, you can just place Psionic Traps at bottlenecks blocking off any chance at a surprise Gank without Smoke of Deceit or invisibility. The only time that Pudge would have a decent chance of Hooking TA would be the narrow window on 1st Night when TA still hasn't hit lvl6.

Rot might burn through Refraction charges, but TA is no more susceptible to being Hooked than any other Mid befoer lvl6. Placing Pudge Mid against a competent TA is just an easy way of giving her Free Farm.

Queen of Pain Mid with an Offlane Pudge would be far better. Pudge can Roam Mid to Gank with much better success, since it would normally be 2 vs 1. You may have to deal with Supports TPing in to stop you, but there's a litle trick you can use with this lineup:-

What does a TA do when a Queen of Pain tries to Shadow Strike her?

She Melds on the spot, making a nice setup for Meat Hook depending on her Position. Using the Hook to Pull her away from the Tower means that even if the Supports TP in to stop the Gank, they'll have further to gobefore they can help out. Meanwhile, Queen of Pain can run/ Blink over while any Defensive Refraction charges get burnt and prepare to Scream. All the Qop has to do is make sure that TA doesn't have Refraction since it's smarter to save it if you get Hooked and use it to negate damage from Scream of Pain as this is more likely to buy her enough time to get to her Supports.

You know what, we can probably argue all day about this topic, and it would get us nowhere, since we both are so convinced that we are both right. I am very sure that if the players are of the same skill level, pudge mid against TA would not be that bad a matchup,and pudge can potentially win. and you firmly believe that pudge will get **** on against any other mid hero. I have prepared another counterargument, but i think we will never be convinced until we proof each other with something that cannot be countered.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPMPtGfLsqU
The magnus in mid trued that, and pudge simply steps out and rots on him. Yeah pudge would get creep harass, but so will you if you decide to fight. And ta is squishier than pudge at that early stage. Point is, there is a counterplay for every counterplay, and this method is especially good since TA has terrible range on the level of melee heroes at level 1-9 if you don't max psiblades first. If pudge just uses rot to harass and hit you, TA has 3 choices.
1: fight. In which case not only will pudge get creep aggro, you will also get hit by his creeps, and at that stage you will most definitely lose against pudge.
2: run, in which case a point blank hook will be coming at you and will be hard to dodge, and at point you should not have refraction charges up anymore, so full damage hook.
3: meld, and hope for your creeps to damage pudge enough to let you kill him, or hope that he gives up. A hook can also bring you out of that.

I did consider offlane pudge, but looking at the enemy lineup, there was no way offlane pudge would survive, and if the enemy supports are any good, pudge would get minimum to no early xp too. That imo is detrimental to a pudge, he absolutely needs early levels to be able to gank and survive against other heroes in midgame.

I have played against pudge and as pudge, and i am quite familiar with what he does. As long as pudge do not dominate early, pudge is next to useless as he will get constantly blown up if he so much as tries to hook into kill. At that point you will rely on your team too much, and in that case a pudge pickup is not worth anymore.

The really is no argueing about pudge vs TA matchup. TA wins if both players know the hero well end of story. There is no kill potential for pudge before six because even if pudge hooks her she will just turn around and kill him with meld and refraction damage.
Even if you kill her once TA will still end up with literally 5 times the Cs. So even if you kill her once or even twice, TA is still ahead or even in net worth, and after that the enemy has a pudge mid who will fall off, and a TA who will keep getting the farm and fighting power.

This is kinda sketchy as TA can just tap Meld and continue running as it's instant cast and all required is disjointing the dagger. Besides this, at high levels, QoP will always have a Sentry Ward so most of the time TA won't even bother.