6.85 Venge

Vengeful Spirit is one the heroes in 6.85 who recieved some sizable, if not overlooked buffs. With the buff to her agi gain, she now has the 2nd highest agility gain (3.3) in the game ( Morphling edges her out with 3.4). Even before this buff, venge had decent right click for a support and her starting agi was really high (it's like the 3rd or second most in the game).

I've only seen venge picked once or twice in this match, in which Virtus.Pro tried running her as a 1 position with mixed results.

What I don't know is how she fits into meta, whereas in 6.83, she was a first pick material support (as was lion), but when 6.84 came around, she fell off the face of the earth. Is there any way she's viable in 6.85's meta?

What do you guys make of venge in this patch? Were the buffs to her movement speed and stat gain noteworthy or will she have to wait until 6.86 to become relevant again?

As I only play her support and only did a game with her recently after the patch (where I didn't feel the diferences), I would also very much like to know opinions on this. I always felt she was a trash #1 and #2 before, but I have no idea now, with the right team composition.

That's funny, my friend and I are currently arguing, because he says "Vengeful Spirit is the worst support in the game. She is so useless." He said that "everything a support does, Venge sucks at. She can't harass, she saves people far worse than Dazzle or Earth Spirit, and she has only 1 really ****py single target stun. The only thing she does well is stack 2 camps at once."

Vengeful is still a decent support this patch, she really shined in the 6.83 era, since she's extremely powerful late game for her ability to initiate and misplace a key enemy hero, and the damage boost of her passive really rocks with a carry that tends to get their primary attribute (Phantom Lancer, Morphling, Terrorblade, Chaos Knight) or in a minus armor draft. She is quite a bit weaker early game than many supports, but her wave of terror makes her right clicks hurt a lot once it's leveled up.

I've been meaning to try a core venge this patch, since the buff to her agi gain makes her late game presence better. Sange Yasha and Mjollnir makes her output quite a lot. Still, she's quite limited by her range I find, so it's probably not a great idea.

This Venge change is the silliest part about the patch, by far. It literally only buffs Venge as a carry (especially the movement speed btw) and helps nothing about her as a hard support. Feels a bit like a troll from Icefrog xD

If you want to screw around, play her mid. She's really level-dependent and having a level 3 swap early is awesome for snowballing. Of course a core Venge only swaps offensively to get kills.

I think Hand of Midas on a support Venge is actually legit as hell if you can get one early. Venge deosn't need items, and she's very level dependent. If you want to play right-click Venge without throwing the game by playing her as a core...I think that's the best compromise.

Lot of things to like about Veng at the moment, but her current role is a bit murky. I'd say most people still think of her as a support, as that's her most common role historically. Add in the utility armour reduction, the stun, the save-swap and the aura...it kind of makes sense.

Aside from her stats, there's nothing she really brings as a carry that she doesn't already bring as a support. Traditional carries tend to be more "selfish" in their skills, with bigger benefits for them.

Still, I like her a lot this patch, she can hit really hard with only a little extra equipment. Where possible I try to play her as a greedy #4, boots, medallion into potential crest and treads. Maybe add a Desolator if you've got the farm. Force Staff and Blink Dagger obviously useful as always.

Mana still a bit of an issue, and you need to "assist-snowball" ideally. As with most gank heavy supports, tends to suffer a bit of a midgame dip if you don't get kills/assists as she's not a particularly great team fight hero. Can make up for it later on though.

She's still especially good when paired with stats-heavy cores (who get the biggest boost from Vengeance Aura) and/or stacking armour reduction.

i drafted her in JDL in an agrro trilane armour reduction draft.

venge, SF, Undying, Dazzle, Clinkz

i think she is still a great hero just better if you have a relatively decent draft to place her in.

We nw know , for a fact, that ice fros her on dota fire and that he one big troll.
What can you expect?
Next patch we will see such wacky changes you will sy omg this dota is becoming more like Mario
Mark my words...

I think she was, and still is a great support. People seem to constantly forget VS was THE #1 pick/ban in 6.83, and nothing much has changed about her (aside from some wrist slap nerfs) since. When the magic damage Leshrac meta rolled around, her pick/ban rate plummeting was to be expected.

Adding to that, games don't last as long. Vengeful Aura nowadays, would be boosting heroes with mid game items and not six slotted carries with 200+ auto attacks. So she ends up not adding that much damage to teamfights as she used to.

I said it once, and I'll say it again, she's not weak, it's just not her meta. The best way to see her be meta again is not by buffing her, but by buffing heroes that would benefit from her aura, ie, team fighting right clickers.

I think Venge is underwhelming in any enviorment where supports are rich.

In the absence of farm, she's a great hero, because her skill-set has a lot of value stuff in it. She's got repositioning, initiation, counter initiation, a strong aura, minus armour, scouting tool, and a solid disable. That's all really good stuff to have.

But when you have an enviroment where supports are getting farm, where they can pick up utility items in good timings, then suddenly she's a lot worse. Because whilst her skill-set is solid, she doesn't have any real form of scaling; Mobility doesn't make her initation much stronger, she can kinda semi-carry but not that well. I guess her minus armour can become a lot stronger, but there's somewhat more dedicated heroes for that.

It's part of why she was so good in 6.83, because supports were piss poor.

Additionally, her aura does less in an enviroment where carries aren't just stacking stats on stats (But that still exists, so she's technically draftable there), and the nerfs to Wave of Terror were suprisingly big (She went from have 5s of uptime on the ability to 5s of downtime). Not to mention the death of Drow Ranger Visage which was her other traditional home.

She doesn't do anything better than any other support when you can get farm on your support. She just does a lot of individual stuff.

Like why would you value her over say Dazzle this patch? Dazzle has better minus armour, better team-fight presence, better ability to save, probably a better laning presence as well. Admittedly Dazzle is too good right now, but the point remains; She's a jack of all trades that needs other supports to be hurting to shine.

Dazzle is purely defensive though. Venge is also an initiator. Of course if you only use swap to feed to save allies then you're playing an underpowered Dazzle. But if you use swap to pull enemies out of position like Batrider then you're the only hero who can do that.

Dazzle is a poor support with no item scaling as well.

Venge is pretty horrible in dual lane setups though, which have become the norm with those buffs to offlanes. Could be an explanation : she'll probably get owned by strong offlanes. Brood, Lich + 1, Undying + 1, Doom + 1...GG lane lost. She's really a hero for double roam or trilanes. If you play your safe lane to kill, she's great. If you play your safe lane just to survive against stupid laning heroes, you're screwed.