Dota Missing Skeleton King Counter Part...

SkyStormSpectre you're missing Kyfoid's godly point. If you get Heart no one will attack you because you're too tanky, people aren't stupid. Mask of Madness is the ideal item to lure opponents.

Oh. Okay...

Though.
People are stupid. ;P

But nevermind then.

If you are looking for a hero that has both hp and dmg, try ANY STR CARRY.
Build str, and therefore build both dmg and durability on a strength hero.

I dont understand the point of this thread. Skeleton King's lack of a counterpart has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this thread.

Read a couple more of Kyfoid's threads, and you'll begin to see he's the Galileo of Dota.

To be honest his takes are quite refreshing, a nice break from seriousness.

So I'm back from my journey on trying to figure out if such a character exists in this game that can...

A.) Take Damage

and

B.) Be threatening enough offensively to become a target and make effective uses of blade mail

My typical start for most all characters that had one or two high mana costing low cool down skills would end up being the recipe for soul ring and a ring of regen. It's slightly risky if you can't get access to the shop, but totally worth it if one can pull it off, because you can spam your... nuke, if that's what it is... for lane domination.

After my soul ring, I grab my boots...

After this point, because I preference being able to take damage, I found myself making Hood of Defiance.

For any of the characters that this worked on, it either ended up being a character that relied on magic spell damage, or a character that had some kind of offensive passive in order to eventually come back to a blade mail.

Those characters ended up being Magnus and Skeleton King.

I found that on magnus, after I rushed my ring and boots, that a veil of dischord in to a hood of defiance worked well because I could make up for damage lost with a armlet of mordiggian after. So I could eventually get my blade mail and make good use of it after doing his ulti, slashing, then raming the entire team, then setting off a blade mail with cleave to clean up.

I guess it works but what I didn't like is that Magnus is not labeled as durable, and 2nd, his magic damage obviously becomes weaker in to late game... I feel like his magic damage out put is spread thin across the 3 spells.

But it did have some interesting potential there...

Doing the same soul ring in to boots, then Hood of defiance, also worked well on skeleton king because he still has his crit chance... but even if you make up for getting hood of defiance with an armlet of mordiggian, you are short on the hp regen from a veil of dischord. His crit and life leach obviously make up for that, but I really was trying to find a character that could just turn on armlett and not have to worry about it...

I tried this approach on the treant protector, but then later realized that the tree is an escape with his invis for a reason... because he's not really suppose to be the one taking hits... which is why he stays invisible when casting his spells.


The two characters which I haven't played that I consider to have great potential to fill the role that I am after are Axe and Huskar... I've been willing to give my approach a shot on these guys but they seem over played and picked. Axe may be durable but he's not a carry, and also doesn't typically get a veil of dischord which combined with the Hood can counter the life lost from armlet which you use to make up for strength loss. He does have some magic attacks but they are single target, not really designed well for veil.

Axe does obviously have berserkers call which would obviously work great with a blade mail, but I really wanted to make up for offensive output lost using an armlet that I could just flip on and not have to turn off. This doesn't quite work with axe either unless you get more then a Hood of Defiance... and I really don't want to get any more life regen items outside of hood unless they have offensive output. Veil of dischord has this but axe is, again, not a nuker.

Huskar, now there is a character that could probably handle an armlet quite easily, but I noticed that his life regen ability doesn't last forever, although, it is an awful lot... but he also doesn't have a magical damage AOE attack.

I don't know if an armlet is that great of an idea when life is running down low as well...


So where was the character I was looking for... I had honestly researched all of them hopelessly... I couldn't find "The One"

But then I got to Dragon Knight, the damn character that I assumed to be a starting hero for noobs. But as I looked at his roles, I noticed that he had all the descriptions I was looking for.... Durable... Carry, Disabler to enhance himself as a threatening target....

This guy has a powerful AOE nuke... ok, good so far...

Then I looked at skill 3 and it was an armor/life regen passive...

It maxes out at 5, but that could be just enough to counter the life lost for mordiggian...

The following build was the result to find the character that could perform the unique and missing role to a satisfactory level.

-Start with woul ring recipe and ring of regen
-Make ring at shop
-Get boots of tranq (These also help counter armlet later, and help him with his super slow movement speed out of dragon form)
-Start with breath of fire and then his passive and go back and forth, rush to veil of dischord to get his dragon fire up to 375 damage at level 4, which is pretty much worth it.

-Get HoD

Then, make up for the offense lost from HoD and Vel with an armlet of mordiggian

Get rid of the soul ring later and now you have 3 open slots left for....

-MoM
-Daedius

and last but not least... blade mail...

MoM works effing fantastic for jungling on the ranged Aoe Dragon, whoever recommended helm of the dominator in to satanic on this guy was not getting the picture... it's as though they assumed he had berserkers call and could fore target for effective blade mail..

It's also kind of important generally speaking to be fast in order to force yourself as a target, unfortunately lacking in non dragon form but MoM still helps outside of dragon, fantastic in dragon form.

And that's pretty much it...

The HoD upped to Pipe of insight, the natural life regen on his passive, the life regen on veil, the life regen on tranquil boots, and the life regen on the armlet itself should be enough to counter the life lost from armlet which will allow you to just turn it on and leave it on, which makes up for any offensive output lost from getting the Veil and Hod/Pipe.

I guess a heart could work for any char wanting to use armlet but that's not really leaning toward an offensive sort of item, plus it's expensive, plus disables on attacks.


But that's about it... Dragon Knight seems to be the one character that can comfortably pull off the role and effect that I've been trying to achieve... it seems like he was practically meant for it....

Crazy as he just came off as such a basic starting hero that seemed to lack any depth...

So like I said, I really feel like this is the role that seems to be missing from team games that can counter what most pubers dominate with these days...

My biggest disappointment with this build is in not having found a way to include a shadow blade some how because escaping seems to be DKs biggest problem.

To be honest i wasn't reading all posts in this thread, but if you want strong character with Blade Mail you can choose Clockwerk. He is my favourite Blade Mail carrier, cause he forces enemy to attack him for a chance to run away. Sometimes enemies don't even notice that you have Blade Mail. Another good hero to carry Blade Mail is Axe, he also forces enemy to attack him with his Q.