RIP Weaver

Hey, Weaver is not a grill(ed) bug, show some respect :)

He can be played either safe lane or dual offlane. And he's a situational pick against teams with low lockdown and preferably no silence. He can in principle rush a Diffusal Blade to get rid of silence but it still sucks to play against.

It's not? ;_; I didn't know that. I will correct myself from now on. There goes another female in Dota sniff

Isn't Weaver a lot like Morphling right now?

They both are:

• Single Target carries
• R[A]Ts
• Weak to silence
• Mobile
• Strong in Lane

but Weaver likes pure damage items and Morphling should build stats one way or another.

What do you guys think?

Except Weaver also focuses on minus armour.

Weaver was buffed in the last patch, and has been further buffed this patch, both directly and indirectly:-

As well as the Diffusal Blade changes in the latest 2 patches. If you have Linken's Sphere + Diffusal Blade, you become incredibly hard to lockdown.

You have to look at both Teams in order to decide what you need. As you say, Black King Bar is necessary against certain Heroes, i.e. Invoker, Outworld Devourer, Riki, Storm Spirit, Tinker and Zeus.

Otherwise, Diffusal Blade + Linken's Sphere will do a lot of work for you. Black King Bar should be gotten as a 4th-6th Slot Item but you don't need to Rush it most games.

Against Heroes with AoE Stuns like Leshrac or Lina, Linken's Sphere does more than you think it would. Both Heroes have a targeted setup for those Disables (Euls and Lightning), which...are blocked by Linken's Sphere. You could argue that a Shadow Blade Lina can Stun you while Invis, but you're hardly likely to get Black King Bar off under those circumstances, are you? And if you live? Time Lapse and run away!

Some Blink Dagger + AoE Disables can be a problem, but you shouldn't be in a Position to get caught out by Hoof Stomp or Slithereen Crush. Keep an eye out for Heroes like Slardar and Centaur Warrunner and move to another Lane if they rotate in to Kill you.

As for Dust of Appearance, Diffusal Blade and, if necessary, Time Lapse are more than sufficient.

Pretty much Weaver in a nutshell, apply pressure, go for Pickoffs, never be in the middle of a teamfight (unless you have at least 2 of 3 Defensive Items), know your limits.

This does leave one potential problem though. A lack of Damage against Towers. This is why I tend to rush Desolator on Weaver, you can Push out Waves and deal damage in fights with The Swarm, but you can't apply pressure to Towers without Desolator.

By all means though, if you don't need to take Towers yourself, Hand of Midas into Linken's Sphere has been a goto build in Pro games since 6.85, but most games, you're going to want that fast Deso.

Safe Lane, or a Dual / Aggro Tri-Lane

He's more like Clinkz, but he's harder to kill in exchange for having less Damage. Both can get Pickoffs, both die easily if locked down, both can Rat and Melt Towers with Desolator like BAWSes.

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I have to ask though...

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2053483661

What is this Item build supposed to do for Weaver? I can understand that you want to go Medallion of Courage for Pickoffs, but none of your other Items seem to follow on from that. You have no Desolator to further amplify the Minus Armour to 3-shot the Nature's Prophet, you have no Diffusal Blade to Purge QoP's Ghost Scepter

You've got a little Wave Clear from Maelstrom, some Tankiness from Eye of Skadi. I assume the Dragon Lance is there to dissasemble into Black King Bar, but... Vladmir's Offering...I can't think of any impact this Item would have on Weaver.

You have no Linken's Sphere, no Black King Bar, no Diffusal Blade and your UAM is Eye of Skadi which Stacks with Lifesteal. If you're in the middle of a fight, you're an easy target, if you're not in the middle of a fight there's no point in getting an Aura. This Item build seems...highly questionable to me...

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EDIT:-


Okay, I can see where you're going with Dragon Lance...I'm not a big fan of Dragon Lance on most Heroes, but Weaver is probably the number 1 worst Hero to build it on. I literally cannot think of another Hero who gets as little use out of this Item as Weaver

Now, you may think the +130 Attack Range is good, but ask yourself this: "What impact do you have with 555 Attack Range that you do not have with 425 Attack Range when you have Maximum Move Speed 4 out of 6 seconds, and an Attack with Unlimited Attack Range every 3 seconds?".

Considering Weaver's terrible Base Attack Point of 0.65 seconds, along with the fact that you generally don't build Attack Speed on him, you're going to get a Geminate Attack Proc, every 4th Attack at most. So at most, you're getting the extra Range on 80% of your Attacks...however...your opponents aren't going to just stand there and Manfight you from between 425 to 555 Attack Range, either they'll stand their ground and let you Attack them from 425 Range, or they'll run away from you, now if they're running away from you, you will position yourself in 1 of 2 ways:-

You can use Shukuchi to run into them and little ahead, then Hit them from Melee Range, so that no matter where they turn, you are in Position to throw out a 2nd Attack, so, from this Position, does +130 Range let you land your 2nd Attack? In 1 second (roughly the time in between Attacks at lvl25 / lvl10 with +30 Attack Speed), at Max Move Speed of 522, you might think the answer is yes, but guess again! Either they run past you, a distance of more than 425 which requires you to turn and move forward a little to land the Attack while still in 425 Range.

Otherwise, they can spend at least 0.118 seconds turning 90 Degrees (assuming 0.4 Base Trun Rate), requiring you to move a little in their direction to land an Attack from 425 Attack Range.

So, basically, you don't have to move a little to land 1 out of roughly 4 attacks while chasing Heroes if you have Dragon Lance...that is the sum total of it's impact when chasing a Hero...

What about Sieging? No difference! What about Farming? No difference!

So, if I think it has no impact on Weaver, where do I see this Item having an impact? I actually think it's amazing on Drow Ranger because you can Siege highground with Aegis of the Immortal from outside the Tower's Attack Range, Drow has a Range of 625, Tower has 700, Drow with Dragon Lance has 755. This is the kind of impact Dragon Lance is supposed to be built for and it lacks this kind of impact on Weaver. Feel free to build it if you're going Black King Bar (especially if you're also building Butterfly), but don't build it for the +130 Attack Range, it does not have enough impact on Weaver to justify the Cost.

(Please people, do not misdirect the thread and start arguing about Dragon Lance on Drow Ranger, if you disagree with me, PM or start a new thread about Dragon Lance / Drow Ranger, I just wanted to point out that +130 Attackl Range has an impact on some Heroes, but absolutely none on Weaver)

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EDIT:-

Other than the Linken's Sphere rush which Hamster mentioned, some good example Item build on Weaver looks like this:-

Magic Stick/ Magic Wand -> Ring of Aquila -> Ring of Health -> Power Treads -> Medallion of Courage -> Black King Bar/ Linken's Sphere -> Desolator (sell Magic Stick) -> -> Solar Crest -> Boots of Travel (sell Ring of Aquila -> Black King Bar/ Linken's Sphere (sell Power Treads) -> You should really have won the game by now...

^ A useful build if you're contested in Lane by a Dual Offlane / Defensive Tri-Lane. You're probably not going to get Desolator in time to apply pressure before big Items start coming out on the other Team, so defense 1st, Ratting Power once you've driven the other team back and won a few fights.

Magic Stick/ Magic Wand -> -> Hand of Midas -> Boots of Speed -> Linken's Sphere -> Boots of Travel -> Desolator -> Diffusal Blade/ Black King Bar -> Monkey King Bar -> Diffusal Blade/ Black King Bar (sell Midas)

^ If you have a good Lane, use a Hand of Midas to further increase your Gold and Exp lead, rush your Linken's Sphere and Boots of Travel to apply pressure around the map, then get Desolator to start getting Pickoffs and ez Towers. The get your next Defensive Item, or just build Diffusal Blade to make Dust of Appearance and Ghost Scepters useless, and MKB, because while Daedalus is nice for Crits, it's better to cancel TPs if you're going for Solo Kills, and in every game, there will be some Form of Evasion / Blind

Magic Stick/ Magic Wand -> Ring of Aquila -> Boots of Speed -> Desolator -> Linken's Sphere -> Boots of Travel -> Diffusal Blade -> Black King Bar -> Monkey King Bar

^ The typical Xyrus build, for when you had a tough Laning Stage, but still found Farm and Kills, use the early Deso to take Tier 1s and open up the map, use Linken's to apply even more pressure

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2050219045

Remember kids, Diffsual Blade makes Omniknight cry! 8{D

They have very different timing windows though. Weaver is super strong in the mid game while Morphling's mid game is awkward at best (if you make the eblade rush build work)...and completely garbage at worst (if you don't go eblade).

Also Morphling isn't weak to silence, he goes Manta Style as a second item, even situationally as a first item. Weaver on the other hand has no use for manta whatsoever so he has to go Diffusal Blade against silence.

@Xyrus : Well yes, before this patch rushing Desolator or Diffusal Blade after a situational midas and going 1/4/1 + stats was pretty much the only viable build, and rushing linkens was pretty awful. But now the 4/4/1 linkens rush is situationally decent thanks to the buffed bugs (which are almost a spammy nuke now).

I played weaver today in 10v10. Except that i had my name as CHI LONG QUA and i paused the game at minute 1 and kept pausing it at every moment somebody unpaused and they all abandoned.





My day's entertainment.

The bug is still good, you just have to assess the opposition carefully. Lots of burst = dead bug.

I'd suggest he's pretty much viable in any lane (even mid) provided you've got the right opponents. He lanes extremely well against some, extremely badly against others, with not a lot inbetween.

The biggest mistake I see many Weaver players make (other than being in the middle of team fights without a BKB) is they tend to make glass cannon builds. Yes, he can be extremely damaging with the right items, but you can only do damage if you're alive.

As stated - be on the edge of fights, make the right pick offs. Also, buy HP if you need it. Sure, you can't leave yourself without right click, but you can boost your survivability. Many don't realise that Time Lapse is massively more effective the more HP you have - it gives you more margin for error, and more ability to just "undo" damage the enemy have spent time and effort inflicting.

I've been having some success with weaver but who knows it might just be the Mar I'm playing at cause nobody knows how to play against a lot of hereos and so I am able to reinstall most ppl

#savetheweavers
#bitterpattern

If you skip Desolator to go for Eye of Skadi (it's not like there are a ton of viable survivability items on Weaver, heart on agility heroes especially those who lack damage is super underwhelming), won't this make you commit to a farming playstyle, on a hero that's supposed to go for early kills?

The big strength of Weaver is that he comes online very early (he only needs level 7 really). Sure he can go for a Crystalys or Diffusal Blade plus a linkens or BKB, plus a skadi...but that's a lot of farm with a really awkward buildup.

A big mistake I used to do for a long time was to farm too much on Weaver. He's really a mid-game hero that relies on armor reduction to 3-shot people, if you go for a late game hard carry-like tanky build, I think he'll suffer from his lack of sustained damage when his awkward buildup finally comes online.

I guess it still deserves experimenting with. After all diffusal is a super cost-efficient fighting item now with the buffs, it can replace deso, and it solves your damage issues while waiting for late game items.