Dead Naga Storage

So, Naga Siren. The terror of 6.80. Dota's diva rat queen. She's fun to play, if not necessarily easy, and has the added benefit of making the enemy team suffer as you win. However, she's mostly ignored both in pro scene and in pubs, and I seriously think it's because of one question.

Why would you pick Naga when you can pick Terrorblade?

At this stage, there's no doubt my favourite demon marauder is a very potent hero. I've been spamming him for free MMR. Thematically, he and Naga are very similar. Both are illusion-based split push hard carries, both farm extremely quickly, and both have the ability to single-handedly take over a game if they get enough momentum. Terrorblade is the more aggressive version, Naga Siren the more defensive one.

Naga, however, has some disadvantages.

1) She can't really take over a teamfight.
Terrorblade has Reflection, one of the most absurd teamfight skills in the game past 40 minutes. Naga has her song, but that doesn't have the same destructive impact and is very reliant on your team to make use of it.

2) She's reliant on a well-timed Radiance.
If your Radiance is late, goodbye easy game. Naga isn't the strongest laner, with low damage, poor animation and being vulnerable to harassment. Terrorblade doesn't have that weakness. He just needs a Yasha to explode and isn't too concerned unless it's at 15 minutes or later.

3) Can't fight.
Naga just can't. While she's not bad in 1v1s, providing that 1v1 isn't against a Sven, you don't pick Naga expecting to fight before you're 6 slotted.

However, despite this, her pool of counters is lower. The fact that she's much tankier than Terrorblade means that picking her into a Lina isn't as problematic, and she can potentially resist an Ember Spirit's onslaught too.

So how have you been playing 6.87 Naga? Success? Failure? Would you ever pick her over a Terrorblade? Discuss away.

I don't like terror. i just don't. Also, there's something satisfying about winning as a splitpushing naga, Microing you illusions to every lane and watching enemies chase you and you illusions endlessly while you slowly, but surely, save up enough $$$ to get 6 slotted. Then again, why naga if you can have anti-mage, or the poor(rich) man's naga(alchemist)?

That being said, i don't have the confidence to play naga in a pub, there's too many things that could go wrong, the lane failing is one of the lesser worries.

Originally this was a lot longer, but I've cut it down for readability.

http://www.dotabuff.com/players/81476355/matches?date=&hero=naga-siren

Naga Siren starts with 6 less damage than Terrorblade. This is remedied by the end of the first creep wave, since she rushes Poor Man's Shield for +6 damage. After that first wave, Naga has 7 armor, 20 damage block (heroes), 51 damage (+40% with Quelling Blade), 320 movespeed, and some pretty awesome stat gain (particularly high strength gain for an agility carry). She can stack camps for herself, control runes, harass enemies, and farm the lane, all without leaving the safety of her tower if she so chooses. Ensnare has extremely high kill potential in lane, even though it's kept at level 1. So yeah, Naga's laning is godly for a melee carry. On par with Juggernaut. However, her true value is in her ability to control resources starting once Radiance is up. A relatively slow Radiance is up by minute 20 (with Boots of Speed, Bottle, Quelling Blade, and a Poor Man's Shield).

Each team has access to 1500 gpm in lane creeps and 750 gpm in neutrals, adding up to 2250 gpm per team (excluding ancients, as those aren't very accessible to many heroes at minute 20). Naga takes her allied offlane lane creeps+hard camp, as well as 1 enemy hard camp, 2 enemey medium camps, and 1 enemy small camp. All this being accounted for, Naga's team is getting 2650 gpm, whereas enemies are reduced to 1850 gpm. An 800 gpm difference is massive, and Naga can stall a game in this position for sort of as long as she likes. 15 minutes later, Naga has Boots of Travel, Manta Style, Butterfly, Heart of Tarrasque, and a Diffusal Blade. She is unfightable. Her team's overall net worth advantage is now 12k, Naga can rotate mid to start forcing enemies further into their own side of the map, cutting off an extra 2 hard camps. Now it's a 1050 gpm difference, and it only grows. Naga is really good at controlling the entire map's resources.

She has one more special quality, which is the fact that it's borderline impossible to win against a Naga player who has control of the map. This is because even if you wipe her team, a stacked Naga can send all of her illusions in to kill all of your creeps. It takes them roughly 1-2 seconds, they each have 46% evasion, 29 armor, and over 3k health (albeit with a 3x damage multiplier due to Mirror Image status). You just can't get rid of the backdoor protection unless you kill Naga, which is kind of... not going to happen against a good Naga player.

I'm a firm believer that adding damage block to illusions (along with a few other changes) made Naga a top tier carry in 6.87. Her only true weakness is extremely early push strategies which don't allow her to ever start on that 1000 gpm path. That being said, the hero isn't unbeatable. A snowballing Leshrac or Invoker will deal with her pretty well. They just can't allow her to ever gain any map control, which is kind of difficult to stop her from doing.

Okay Tera, I think you're making a false equivalency here.

Naga Siren and Terrorblade are not the same hero. Naga has disables, she can farm more space and pressure lanes better, can escape ganks, and is a lot less likely to get nuked down. Terrorblade can take towers much earlier, can snowball harder, and in terms of his direct fighting power is stronger.

And I don't quite follow the notion that she "can't fight", at least based on some games I've seen Envy play her. She shouldn't fight directly, but she can definitely be a huge factor in a fight, it's just not the "overwhelm them Chaos Knight style' approach that TB uses, there is a lot of misdirection, more akin to a Pugna or Kunkka that makes use of her tankiness.

And I think one part you miss that is kinda important is how they interact with popular heroes right now, because this is not a single person game, it is a team game, and I think this is where Naga has a slight advantage to off set the "disadvantages" you described of her.

Slark: Terrorblade struggles with this guy (this is where the whole "no disables" thing comes in), can't escape him, can't catch him, and is very weak to getting ganked by him. Naga can do both, and she can win every teamfight against him too by Singing when he Shadow Dances. Slark is also weak to mana burn, so since Naga is actually good with Diffusal, Naga manfights Slark better. Since Slark is a safelane carry, you won't expect to have him on your team when you pick one of these two.

Axe: Pure damage change to Helix is painful, and TB has no real way to stop Axe from gaining momentum in lane, whereas Naga can. And then in later fights, Naga can send her illusions ahead and scout out Axe and disable his dagger, this makes her much better against him by default. And then on the allied side, Terrorblade has the edge, since he can deal damage when Axe stuns and take towers much more easily, though Naga can still use her song to set up calls.

Mirana: Naga once against has the advantage here on both offense and defense. She has a lot more strength and her illusions take less damage, so Mirana's magical damage will not wreck her as badly. And then she has the two disables in order set up arrows.

and then when it comes to their counters, heroes like Timbersaw, Sand King, Invoker, OD, Tiny, Leshrac, they both get owned about equally hard by those dudes.

The point I'm making here is that the position has more nuance than you're suggesting, and you oversimplified it.

I'm disappointed none of you have seen Pulp Fiction.

Among the illusion carries, I consider Terrorblade to be the most versatile, by far. Naga Siren has only one viable playstyle : radiance illusion spam. Chaos Knight and Phantom Lancer have mostly one viable playstyle : manning up in teamfights. So Naga is extremely weak to illusion killers like Lion and rat hunters, and CK/PL are extremely weak to AOE stuns and cleaves.

While on the other hand, TB can teamfight early, he can snowball off early kills, he can flashfarm, he can rat, he can even push early more effectively than a DK... There isn't one strategy that TB doesn't fit in.

Enemy team has Earthshaker, Sand king and Sven? Not a problem, you can just farm and rat all game, and only teamfight much later with a BKB. Enemy team has Slark and Storm? No problem, just take Rosh, deathball them and take rax at 25 minutes. Enemy team has mass nukers like Lina and stuff? Just go treads, dragon lance and raindrops, and tank that up.

His skill build is completely versatile (maxing Q, W or E is equally viable depending on laning stage and playstyle), his item build can be adapted as well, that's why there are so much discussion as to whether you should go early fighting build like treads lance, early rat build like BoTs manta, or all-purpose yasha skadi. (I think we can all agree that both drum and SnY are **** on him since the 6.87 changes.)

Among the illusion carries, TB is the only one I'd have absolutely no hesitaton to first pick. That's what IMO can make him an OSFrog candidate.

First pick TB means you get carry bans on the enemy team and you are left with a carry that cannot fight from behind or has any comeback potential in a 2rax/mega creep scenario.

Just remember this while drafting. A good draft will win you the game in less than 40 mins.

Naga has aghs and full agi way. She has come back potential to boot, thats hands down better than TB or PL or ck.

TB is like morph in that matter that morph can't defend base against mega creeps that well.

Now this is all my hypothesis.

Actually, TB is very good against megas once he has 3 or 4 items. Can cut creep waves into the jungle, can clear them indefinitely without Maelstrom. I've had 3 or 4 games now where I've enacted a megas defence for extended periods of time and even won some of those games.

Also, you can firstpick Terrorblade. Into Ember, Lion and Zeus. I don't recommend it.

It's still perfectly winnable though. It just means that you need BKB and that OSFrog Zeus passive is going to be a pain in the *** by dealing 4x damage to your illusions (why isn't that fixed yet btw).

But then what. They've got a mid Zeus and a safelane Ember. Literally zero push. How are they going to take Rosh end the game before you get farmed? They can't. And what do they have against a farmed TB with BKB? Hardly anything. Buy a bunch of skadis or a bfly and Ember can only tickle you, buy a sheep and he gets rekt.

Seriously, if that's the worst that can happen to me, I say bring it on.

On the other hand, if I have to play Chaos Knight against Magnus, SK and Sven, I say GG we fckin lost.
I've tried to Naga with CK a bit with two control groups to split up illusions and spread-out rat, but there's still the issue of 140 second cooldown. So even then you need a nectarine or refresher to actually make it work, so late late game only...at which time you probably already lost

Until Ember Spirit hits like Crit + BF and then kills waves just as fast as you, and rats just as well. And is more mobile than you, and hits like a truck if you clump up regardless of how much armour you have. It's more favourable for you than PL, but it still works against you.

And Zeus still kills your illusions, and you fairly fast. A 5s BKB in the late game does not help against passive Zeus spam. Zeus also works as a great depusher against your push, so they can drag the game out against you and arguably win it.

Essentially, both of them dump on you early (Because of the magical damage), and then are meh against you in the midgame, and probably beat you late game. It's not an easy match-up for you.