Dark willow, #4 support

That hero is really good. Like really, really good. I'm in love.

Basically she's a #4 support / initiator. Think Earthshaker for a good comparison.

- She has 3 disables, 2 of them being hard disables, 2 of them lasting more than 3.5 seconds. That's absolutely top tier.

- She has an insanely strong escape skill with Shadow Realm, which for a support is frankly gamebreaking. Literally Shadow Dance on a 12 second cooldown. The only way to kill her is basically to silence her.

- Bedlam can deal 1200/2400/3600 magic damage to a single target in 4 seconds. So she can solo kill basically anyone with dagger as only item. OSfrog.

Items :




Blink Dagger is core, frankly. She's a completely different hero with it. If she gets caught, she can Shadow Realm and blink out, just like Puck. And she needs dagger to position herself for Bedlam, since that skill requires her to be literally hugging enemies to work at full strength. Initiation with Terrorize into Cursed Crown also requires dagger. Positioning Bramble Maze *behind* enemies also requires it. Seriously every single one of her skills needs dagger to work well.

Force Staff can push enemies into Bramble Maze bushes (which always hits a bush regardless of where they're facing), and she needs max mobility anyways.

Interestingly she has the best base BAT in the game of 1.3. With her lvl 25 talent and her disables she has actually some pretty crazy right click. With her short attack range and ultra squishiness she's still pretty bad at right-clicking heroes in fights, however she can go for RAT DOTA plays and shred towers really fast, not to mention her insane escape abilities, so BoTs are super good in the late game.

Meteor Hammer has a pretty solid synergy with her disables as well.

Another thing, you don't want to be that guy who uses Shadow Realm offensively, and then feeds because it's on cooldown. That's a defensive skill. The point is to be untargetable while you hug them and murder them with Bedlam, or simply escape.

Terrorize is a great teamfight skill but you need coordination with you team so they attack the enemy team from the back (so the enemies walk towards your team and not away from it). Used this way it's literally a 4 second Ravage.

Good combos :



Fear the enemy team, and make bushes behind them so they walk into the bushes. That's the way to start a teamfight usually.



Guarantees a 3.5 second stun (no escape shenanigans) and then blink in and murder them with your wisp. Then just Shadow Realm to get out.




Euls can control enemies for your delayed stun.




Casting her 3 disables at the same moment is really good. They'll spend 1.5 seconds fleeing, 2.5 seconds getting stuck in the bushes, then they'll be clumped up for the 3.5 second stun. That's 7.5 seconds of AOE hard disable in a teamfight if executed well.


Skill build : 1/2/1 -> 4/2/1.

Don't be that guy who maxes Shadow Realm. Bramble Maze scales far better. Q gives both damage and disable, while W only gives damage. Her right click is pretty good (1.3 BAT!) so disable + right click is better than straight up nuke damage.

She has very few weaknesses. Cursed Crown can be purged (the debuff, not the stun), but you can use your ult to set it up. Terrorize can be purged but only by a teammate who wasn't hit by it (e.g Lotus Orb), but no big deal. And she gets shut down by Black King Bar completely - unless she initiates with fear and does her full combo, so even then there's a way around that. All in all just like any hero with awesome skills her only counter is getting silenced, or now, far worse, Nullifier'd.


All in all, absurdly good hero. Insane CC, insane damage, and an escape skill. All with dagger as only item.

The hero is way better as a mid than a support, she's almost impossible to gank and you can lh/deny everything(which is a huge deal now that you deny 75% of exp to the enemy) thanks to her animation + W is a giant harrass/scare factor spell.

She isn't gonna work as a support aside from double hardlanes(which will probably be dominant this patch, solo offlane is pretty much dead) because her control spells are really mediocre on low levels and outside of skirmishes - E is poor man's coldfeet vs 1 enemy, Q won't catch a single enemy more than 2 times, both spells are really poor on first levels.

And of course she gets a MASSIVE power spike at lv25(which isn't unrealistic if you're core, especially if you go midas), which you will never utilize as a support simply because the hero is mega paper.

I thought about that but seriously she doesn't need any item besides blink. It's like Earthshaker mid. You're farming on a hero that doesn't need farm.

What do you want to farm anyways? Right click items and BKB?




W is pretty weak mid because you don't have vision of the high ground, they can just dodge it by denying vision. It's much better for harassing in the sidelanes where you can simply charge it out of vision.

Sure she has a good animation but she has low base damage. She's literally like Sniper but with 475 range.




Agree that she's good in double hardlanes, but why not double safelanes as well? Sure, she's not that great for ganking mid because the way E works pretty much forces you to towerdive which sucks at low levels, but for getting kills in the safelane, I think she's pretty good.

She has 3 seconds of disable at level 2. In the safe lane the delay on E doesn't matter.

For Cold Feet vs Cursed Crown, it's clearly Cursed Crown that's the better spell. Cold Feet is weak because any hero with an escape skill will jump out of it. She doesn't have that problem.

Besides, even in the mid lane, a level 2 Bramble Maze can hurt. The space is very restricted and you know as well as I how much people like to camp mid all early game.




You utilize it as a support for rat dota with Boots of Travel. If you get caught just W and blink out.

Actually there's a much better way to initiate teamfights than to fear the entire enemy team and have them walk into Bramble Maze. You can fear as many people as you can but then position Bramble Maze so that only half of the enemy team is caught in it. This way you split the enemy team in two. Or even fear only half of the enemy team and catch the other half in the bushes. That way you have a positioning advantage even after the spells wear out.

The CC potential of that hero is pretty insane.

I've had a go with her (#4) and she's fun, but she's relatively level and gold dependent for a support. Mana and mobility needed...you can chill a bit after that. But you need serious amounts of XP to get those spells levelled and useful - the cooldowns at low levels are pretty excessive.

Her escape skill is dependent on the opposition not having either ground target spells or more mobility than you - although you can TP out if they're lacking ground target stun. It's also pretty potent for harassment, although you obviously need to be careful with timing.

Obviously the usual BKB/magic immunity issues apply, as do heroes who can mobility or otherwise ignore your spells (Ember, Storm, etc).

In fact, the biggest challenge playing the hero is the delay between spells that you have to try and time and play around - she's actually a little like Kunkka in that respect.

BTW I call OSHamster - 3600 damage only if opponent agrees to run in circles next to you :)