Countering Axe?

Seriously **** this hero. Creep cutting Axe is a pain in my games.

How do I beat this hero? Its ridiculous how he ruins a lane ao hard and snowballs from there.

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Creep cutting Axe is literally the worst strategy ever and is extremely easy to shut down.

Any ranged support with a slow or stun can simply kite Axe endlessly and slowly but surely cut his health down. As long as you don't come next to your creep wave like a dumbass (he'll just use call and you're dead)...you will keep slowly harassing him. And then you have a low HP Axe right behind your tower...free kill.

Another option is simply to ask your mid hero to gank him.

Literally any ranged support works but the best IMO are :

- Venomancer : tons of slow, and Poison Sting harass destroys Axe in lane.
- Lion : Axe without mana is free food
- Shadow Demon : just kite him while spamming poison. He'll have to walk away or he's dead. Disruption completely ruins call.
- Enchantress/ Chen : just send the creeps forward and sit behind kiting him

If you're playing carry...the problem is that Axe is good against all melee carries so better pick a ranged carry.

Dealing with Axe in lane does require a draft. Thankfully, it is standard that at least one hero in your lane is ranged. Basically, you play against Axe how you play against a midgame Ursa that got Vlads but didn't get to Dagger yet. His arms are a death radius, but he will have a hard time catching up to you. Kind of like a Chaos Knight, if you let him satisfy a certain condition, you will almost have no means to deal with him, so make sure you draft a ranged support (CM, Veno, Witch Doctor) or ranged carry (Viper, Gyro, Sniper).

The easiest way is for an ally to rotate into the lane and kill Axe, like if you're an offlane Tidehunter, you can skill one point in Gush and get an easy kill on him while he's deep in your territory. Remember one thing, if his creep cutting fails, it can be so bad for his blink dagger timing. If you hold out without feeding him kills, you kind of shut down a major initiator, which is good.

However, there can be one situation that is terrifying, and that is if you have a melee carry, and Axe runs as head of an aggressive trilane against you. I cannot think of a better way to shut down a Spectre or Anti-Mage's farm. But he only really shines in lane in that case, and thus is very situational, which means his potential is not really met in normal all pick and is better in ranked or captain's mode where he can punish a lot of melee hero picks on a team.

one thing i have found incredibly useful when playing against creep cutter Axe is just picking Lina.

with her superior attack range, she just eats through Axe's health like a bar of snickers and with an early ring of regeneration she can tank Axe's Battle Hunger spam pretty well.

A lot of it comes down to picks. Like Axe wins a majority of Melee match-ups by default, even if it's 1v3. There's a handful of Melee heroes that can actually deal with an Axe in lane, and that's usually in 1v1's.

Having a ranged hero with actual decent range/damage helps a tonne, as does spammable abilities that can help zone him works wonderfully. Like CM despite being fragile is good, because you can just spam Frostbite against him, even if your base damage sucks.

If you are playing the core in the lane, it's generally good to pick a ranged hero with decent range, and whom you are actually comfortable last hitting under tower with, since that will happen eventually.

As regarding the actual lane; I think its a lane that gets decided very early on, since Axe gets a big power spike at level 2; At level 1, you can be really aggresive on him, and he can't punish you so much. So a tri lane with two ranged supports one of whom with a good kiting spell can really slow his level progression down, because you keep him from getting his early Tranq's.

Of course that's probably not really relevent in your level of play; So pick a decent ranged hero and hope your laning partner doesn't suck and you should at least be able to break even on CS.

Outside of lane; Well if you have a melee heavy draft, you'll struggle, otherwise spread out as much as possible to make his iniations weaker, and try not to blow all your spells on him when he jumps. Just the one stun to keep him from dragging your team mate too far, and be wary for the follow up. In essence the same thing you do to deal with any other initiating hero.

But yeah, if you have a **** line-up against Axe, just pray that the Axe doesn't know how to press his advantage.

I know a lot of people pick Axe as a Dazzle counter due to Culling Blade on Shallow Grave...but it actually works the other way round in lane - Shadow Wave is horrific for Axe. Sure, tank those 3 melee creeps for easy helix's...then eat 240 physical damage for 80 mana...

Undying seems to do quite nicely too. Basically, you have to lower his armour/HP pool to make him take damage from tanking creeps.

Or pick Dazzle.

VS is also pretty good with the wave.

You can just jungle as Axe, not forced to lane at all. Applies to pretty much every single comment here. If the Axe lanes, sure, every single counter you listed is fine. However if he jungles, you need something to gank and kill him easily, without him being able to retaliate much.


So, in general, just pick things that can kite him quite easily. Venomancer, Skywrath Mage.

...but the thread was about laning Axe, more specifically Axe sitting behind your T1 tower creep skipping.

Of course you can jungle Axe, or solo safe lane or something. But Axe as a hero has no direct hard counter, since blink call is instant initiation with pretty much no cooldown that can't be purged in any way, that's why he was always first picked in 6.83.

What IS easy to counter however is creep-skipping offlane Axe, which when you deal with it pretty much gives you 10 free kills and will cause Axe to get reported by his team.