Winter Wyvern First Impressions

I know I'm a long way behind the curve, as usual :). Just played my first few games as Winter Wyvern and generally pretty impressed. My KDA hasn't been great, but feel like I've played well for the team (lot of the deaths were sacrifice plays for cores).

Even the CIS/Russian 4 stack seemed to go ok. We had the world's greediest Alchemist with me in a dual lane. Like he went - Hand of Midas -> Maelstrom -> Battle Fury -> Mjollnir. And this was against a Treant Protector/ Night Stalker lane. Literally had to babysit him constantly as didn't seem to understand that night time was dangerous.

****py Techies player and an Earthshaker who had no intention of helping out at all with support. And this against a team with Riki, so a constant need for Sentry Wards. Oh, and they all bought their own Aghanim's Scepters, despite Alchy having like 10k-20k gold left over after getting 7 slotted. Somehow, we won.

Dotabuff

Observations:

- Cold Embrace is like, ridiculously good if you get it right. Unfortunately everyone also expects you to deliver it every time they're about to die, half way across the map or whatever.

- Splinter Blast is great for long range anti-push, but bit tricky to use against a solo enemy, you have to be creative with neutral creeps and such.

- Some mana problems, it's pretty hard to get farm together with this hero, at least on the teams I've played with.

- Winter's Curse is a little trickier to use than it looks, between active Black King Bars and Linken's Sphere it's not always easy to get the usage you want.

Your skill build was really weird.

The most common build is like 1-1-1 by 3 (Sometimes taking the second point in Splinter Blast over the value point in Cold Embrace, maxing Splinter Blast first. Since your other two skills are really good value points early, and having max Splinter Blast is incredibly useful (Let's you farm, depush by yourself, adds a lot to your team-fight)

But yeah, she's still an insanely good hero. No quite as good as before (The BKB nerf was suprisingly impactful), but definately one of the best supports in the pool right now. Which says a lot given the fact the viable support pool is huge.

Since I don't have time to watch the replay, where did you lane to start with? Did you do the normal drive by mid?

Why did you opt for that skillbuild in particular, Sando?

As you know, I think the babysitter/roaming WW with Arctic Burn maxed first is more than ok, and in that regard I don't agree with Sanvitch. For me it's all a matter of play style and the specific game in question. Also by level 6 you had three points in it, and one value point in the other spells - which makes sense, because you want the slow from Splinter Blast anyways. So besides the second point in Splinter come level 7 instead of directly max Arctic I don't see nothing wrong there at all.

Your way of playing her obviously worked, but why Ghost Scepter? I'm not sure if I've talked about it on my guide and I'm gonna check, but I don't think it's an item that makes that much sense on her, given you already have physical immunity from your spell alone. Why not go for the Eul's Scepter of Divinity, for instance, which would help you against most of your enemies, IMO? And which also gives her a lot os stats that she likes, given the mana problems you mentioned yourself.

Skills wise, I vaguely remembered this guide which is what I used. That value point in Cold Embrace was much needed.

My starting equipment was:

Animal Courier
Sentry Wards
Observer Ward
Tango
Clarity
Iron Branch

Because Russians. We dual laned, same reason. Me and Alchy nearly got killed because our mid wouldn't help secure bounty rune for him (it's only 400 gold right?). Just about got out with both of us on 1/3 health. Couldn't really afford time to deward our pull as he was so vulnerable in lane, and so greedy he couldn't not be near the creeps. Obv first night NS, roaming Riki I had zero farm just covering the essentials. Typical pub 4 cores 1 support. Not really worth watching, it was tedious at times late game, and there were a whole lot of bad plays from both sides.

The annoying thing really with WW is the " Dazzle" factor. I.e. if I die stupidly and miles out of position, it's your fault for not being there to Shallow Grave me.

EDIT: ChiChi

Mana was a major problem for me - very greedy team and lack of camp pulls meant I was extremely poor for almost the entire game. We were laning against NS and Tree, two heroes with high health pools, so % damage seemed pretty good against them, even better if I can make it cheaper with less CD.

I think the Glimmer and Ghost were both well after 30 minutes, and the Force Staff just after 60. Remember, Techies basically do nothing, Alchy went the greediest build imaginable (see above) so was basically useless food for the opposition for most of the early game, which they dominated.

The Ghost Scepter was essential because of Smoke Screen - no way I can cast when silenced. It was also just generally useful for stats and because of IMBA Spirit (who could almost 1 shot me for most of the game). Lion was the only real magic damage use. Also remember that I needed Cold Embrace handy to save my idiot team mates - that combined with Chemical Rage meant we could basically full restore Alchy to health in the duration.

Are you sure you are thinking of the skills in the right order Chichi? Splinter Blast is the nuke, every point you take in it gives you a lot of value because it's an above average damage nuke with a huge cast range.

Whereas the damage from Artic Burn is constant, the slow increase isn't that good (A 25% slow, when you have another 25% slow is generally good enough), the attack range sure, and the cooldown yes; But in the lane you don't need it every 20s, and you can't sustain it every 20s.

Sure, in some situations you can probably have more points in burn, but I still think Splinter Blast is more useful, because it accelerates your farm if nothing else. Whilst you are pretty gold independant, you kinda wanna have Arcane Boots at a reasonable time at least, and the Blast helps that.

But hey, I could be easily wrong, I don't play the hero that much due to my level of games she's technically a hinderance.

Thanks for the explanations. I can see that it was one of those very situational games where a Ghost Scepter was useful after all.

I also think mana is a problem for her if she's played as a poor #5. Most cases you can't even go straight Glimmer Cape if that happens, which sucks. When you do more games and try the Eul's, tell us what you found.

Sanvitch: I did a guide on her where I had to dwell on exactly that explanation, because I think both possibilities are correct and really only differ on the specific game and playstyle, so if you don't mind I won't write it all again :)

But just to sump it up and give you a very practical example, I have good results with her playing the Arctic Burn maxed up, but Tim has also very good results with her and he does the complete opposite build. Of course in theory you always want nukes maxed asap, but if you're picking WW as a value against high HP enemies, your first spell will help you more - and you do have mana problems and are not supposed to be farming alone until later, when you will have Splinter up already anyways.

Oh, Arcane Boots I could only dream of. I was stuck on Urn of Shadows and Boots of Speed for a large chunk of the game. We'd lost map control, they had a Gem, and we'd pushed about 1 tower by 30.

I'm definitely going to experiment with the alternative build with more Splinter Blast as at it would seem like a good stacked camp farming mechanism, and she could use some extra gold income. Just need to wait for a game when I'm not solo support vs invis heroes :).

Remember Ghost Scepter always ChiChi, it's a really great item, especially now that you can TP out with it still active.

Are there any heroes that tanky early on that the tick damage of Artic Burn does more than maxed Splinter Blast would at that timing window?

Plus, just another thing worth highlighting; You are really good at making space with the maxed blast, because you split push faster. You can even do it safely given you can be 1000 range away or something silly? And if you can force rotations off of that, even if you die, that's great because you'd be making space for Alch to clear through some jungle camps, or diffusing fight potential ect ect.

And you can't really do that with just the 1 point.

Idk, I've just never seen that much value in maxing it first. I've seen 2 points taken, and ending with like 2-2-1 by 5. But if it works better for you in practice, I'll accept that there's probably room for error :)

Yup: 1 cast of Arctic Blast does 8% current health damage per second, up to about 34% of their total health if they're full and nothing else is hitting them, and like Splinter Blast, it can hit both of them.

NS/Tree both have about 700 HP with a few basics and levels. So a hit on each will do them about 180 damage each, about the same as level 2 Splinter Blast. Plus it slows slighter stronger, for slightly longer. Dunno, may it would have been worth it, I didn't know the hero well enough to know the Burns didn't stack or at least refresh.

Split pushing...I wish. We lost the early game hard, I had an Iron Branch to my name and a pair of Boots of Speed when we managed to turn around a double kill. The opposition had Riki, Nightstalker, Ember Spirit, Lion - pushing lanes at all would have been suicide for me. Watch like the first 10-15 minutes and you'll see...

Winter is my personal favorite in support roles. If you ask me I personally think it fits in all sorts of team compositions... and adds a hell lot of survivability