Theory Exercise 6 : damage output.

After recently watching the XMG captain draft Alliance Vs Team Secret i saw the how reductions and amplification can have a massive impact upon the way a game is played plus upon the outcome.

Shadow Demon
Mirana
Vengeful Spirit

it didnt look like much to me but wow.

watching an Abaddon go from 800hp to 0hp in 5 right clicks from heroes with dismal level 2 damage .... makes me think.

so this weeks theory exercise is:

Maximising damage output: Construct a "strong" draft that will maximise your damage output while retaining a solid foundation for the game.

for example.

dont pick sky shadown demon sf venge aa as a draft... yes the overall damage output is insane but the exercise here is to try and think of ways you can create a strong draft that will still maximise your damage output.

so ....

theory away !

Kind of a tricky brief - what point in the game do you want to maximise your damage?

I'll try a few anyway:

Max Physical Damage:

Shadow Fiend/ Razor (mid)
Dazzle (supp)
Witch Doctor (supp)
Sven/ Slardar/ Medusa (carry)
Weaver (offlane)

Everyone here brings copious amounts of physical damage and armour reduction to the table, and pretty solidly throughout the game.

Max Magical Damage:

Skywrath Mage/ Zeus (mid)
Warlock (supp)
Venomancer/ Earthshaker/ Sand King (supp)
Pugna/ Luna (carry)
Lich (offlane)

Big, big magic damage...with various amplifiers like Fatal Bonds, Ancient Seal and Decrepify in the mix. You could also look at heroes like Leshrac, Timbersaw, Huskar and Outworld Devourer. Elder Titan also bears looking at in both line ups.

I will give this a shot:

Elder Titan (offlane)
Witch Doctor/Venge (supports-can lane or roam)
Kunkka (safe lane farm)
Magnus (middle)

When you refer to damage output, there are two things to look at: Either raw damage, or things that simply make you hit harder. The problem with going directly for raw damage is that armor counters it if it's physical, and BKB/pipe messes with magical damage.


So what if we take a draft with solid heroes, good teamfight, and various buffs for our team and debuffs for the enemy?

Here is my reasoning behind each of the heroes I chose:

ET: He is a solid offlane and really isn't farm-centric. If he gets an early 6 and maybe a mek, he will be pretty happy.
More importantly, though, is his skillset. His passive at lv.4 removes ALL base armor from enemies around him or his spirit, which is going to make everyone-especially Kunkka-hit ridiculously hard.
RP from Magnus will set up his ult, Earth Splitter, which is very strong in teamfights, and his stomp can be set up by RP or Kunkka's boat.



Magnus: Magnus is a solid mid, and he brings a great initiation to the table with his ult, Reverse Polarity, which in this draft will be used to set up ET's ult, Kunkka's boat, WD's ult, ET's stomp, Venge's Wave of Terror, etc.
He is also picked up here for Empower, which gives bonus cleave and damage to whoever he casts this on. If he casts this on Kunkka anywhere from mid to late game, he is going to hit HARD with the armor reduxes and setup.


WD/Venge: I am grouping these two together because I believe they are fairly self-explanatory. They can roam early if needed, or lane support if needed as well. The Venge's Wave of Terror can be thrown in teamfights to add to the armour redux, and the WD ult and stuns will be doubly effective with a nice grouping from RP/sleep.

Kunkka: Finally, the safe lane carry. I chose Kunkka because he s a fairly tanky hero early game, which would allow the supports more freedom to roam as he needs babysitting less. His boat has a beautiful setup with RP or ET's sleep, and his Tidebringer cleave will hit for absolutely insane amounts of damage in the mid and late game due to the armor redux from Venge and ET, especially with Magnus' Empower.



As far as a damage-dealing powerhouse goes, I believe this is it. The one weakness to it is that all the cores are melee, which means that there will have to be good positioning especially by Kunkka.




Let me know your thoughts-fun excercise!


PS: I have absolutely no idea how to link heroes or skills in these, so it is all text-based. Sorry about that.

Offlane Elder Titan for sure. Natural Order is just too good.
Support Skywrath Mage for the early game nukes and Acient Seal combined with Natural Order just blows everything to pieces.
2nd Support Ogre Magi, Vengeful Spirit, Shadow Demon or Acient Apparition. Since there is no reliable stun with just ET and Skywrath I would go for Ogre or Venge, but the ganking power of SD or AA are also very strong even without a stun.
Mid Shadow Fiend, Sven or QE Invoker, etc basically any hero with both good physical and magical dmg. Puck or Magnus might be good if you want more control and Queen of Pain if you want a higher focus on ganking/snowballing.
Carry Terror Blade, Drow Ranger, Lycan, Medusa, etc basically those who deal a lot of physical dmg.

What about the reworked bloodseeker?

New bloodseeker is imo only viable as roaming support and to fill that role every lane needs at least one reliable stun since bs himself doesn't have any. This leads to pretty limited drafts.

Since the Zeus/Spectre combo also got nerfed by the range limitation I don't feel like bs is better than Skywrath, ET or SD.

Slardar Vengeful Spirit Dazzle Sven Dragon Knight??
Great armor reduction, quick reaction with slardar blink and venge swap, sustainity from dazzle's heal, sven's warcry buff, and DK's great damage output and splash.
I'd like a magnus for the RP so DK can maximise the splash output but I have to swap away sven or slardar so........