DotA 2 Smalltalk

Someone give me reps or medals or.something

Lifestealer is pretty good against the golem, he can pretty much eat it without taking much damage. It's pretty easy to kite. Failing that, blink Doom or any extended silence will do the trick.

Here's mine - opposition have picked mid Invoker, who are the best heroes to lane against him?

I'm thinking a double lane of Io+ Tiny. Tiny can CS well, Io will take care of regen, and Overcharge enables Tiny to run up Invoker and get a kill.

R[A]t doto and/or AOE counterpush. Warlock's skillset is extremely specialized and only has any use in large scale teamfights and big pushes. In skirmishes he's dead weight.
Playstyle counters are better than direct counters in that case.




Ogre Magi, with the "Nerf Bat" cosmetic item equipped.
Omniknight, with the "Nerf Hammer"
Sniper, with the "Nerf Gun"
Treant Protector, with the "Magic Nerf Stick".

No seriously. You can't do jack. When a hero hits for 120+ damage at level 5...there's no way to contest CS or anything. The previous Shadow Fiend meta clearly shows that there's no direct counter to ultra high right-click damage mid heroes. The only thing you can do is MAJOR mid hate from supports. Sit mid with any roaming supports and buy heaps of dust. You absolutely need to shut him down early and hard. He has 280 MS, the worst in the game, so he's really an easy kill in the very early game, far more so than SF.

I can list the heroes that don't lose mid to Invoker if you want...but none of them will win the matchup. Only draw the 1 vs 1 at best and have decent kill potential with support ganks.

- Puck
- Templar Assassin (skill based, and honestly a good Invoker will destroy TA)
- Legion Commander
- Lone Druid
- Venomancer
- Death Prophet
- Windranger
- Skywrath Mage
- Shadow Fiend
- Razor
- outworld devourer

And, my personal favorite... Broodmother mid. Actually...she can win that matchup, probably the only one really.

Viper gets destroyed btw, don't even try.

Another good thing you can do is pick Bane, sit mid with Enfeeble and set up any skillshot.

TLDR, camp mid and hate on him hard, since the only exploitable weakness of the hero is his 280 base MS, especially since almost every Invoker goes Q/E these days.

Invoker is countered mostly by your other roles, not by your mid hero pick. There are great carry picks against him for example, OK offlaner picks and OK support picks, but for mid counters, not really. Probably should consider support Pugna for maximum hate.

Another tip : use the power of Blade Mail, a timeless counter to OSFrog heroes XD

I think outworld devourer ***** on Invoker. Actually he does on pretty much any mid matchup except the Broodmother shenanigans.

Start with oov for sure.
Arcanes, urn if you think you need it. After that it's either veil or aether lens. I've been building aether lens a lot as first item since you already have half of the build up from arcanes, but a lot of the chinese pro players are rushing veil, which is really good too (stats, more dmg). Both are fine, but I think you should still build aether lens even if you get veil. After that it's aghs.

@Caine
Thanks! I never really get an OOV although I tend to get an urn in most games. I never build aether lens however. Guess I'll try it.

Only before you can cast orb on him, which pretty much means until he gets his forge + cold snap. OW is easier, but not much. I'd actually say Invoker is a counter to OD mid simply because he does not suck against OD.

ES as a support has very low potential to zone offlaners, with OOV it's a bit harder for offlaners to trade with him. Also the slow is really good to have after you roll in onto someone. Aether lens is really good, but the full potential comes when you have aghs. The pull range is INSANE and it increases the tiny enchant remnant range to an acceptable one.
You suggested blink in the first post, I think it's fine after aghs but before it's not needed earlier. If you blink into 3 heroes you are going to die before you refresh your ult twice. ES doesn't want to be in the middle of the fight for very long. He wants to be on the edge doing kicks and pulls. YOLO blinking/rolling in isn't very good.
Also, another major item some of the better players build is guardian greaves. I never really used that build because I'm too poor as a support and my timing on the mek would be too late, but if you get a large amount of gold it's really good.

Thanks guys - this at least reassures me I'm not missing something obvious about trying to matchup :)



I'd thought this too...and while it's possible I just got outplayed, actually found this quite difficult. He's got such a long range it's quite hard to get close enough to land an Orb on him (esp. uphill) without taking harassment.

The only way to guarantee it is you Astral Imprisonment him first...but that's list 120 mana at least, plus 100 for each orb you throw. Essence Aura isn't really reliable enough early on to necessarily help you. Say you land 3 hits...that's 420 mana to gain 6 damage for 40 seconds...meh. You'd need quite a few levels to make this worthwhile.