Hero Discussion #1: Abaddon, The Lord of Avernus

For sure. I was puzzled when Cyn mentioned Aether Lens as an item for him, but now I kinda get where he's coming from.

What's your views on abba's roaming potential?

abba roaming is really weak, he has no slows nor stuns, unless he runs up to enemies and hits them a bunch. maybe coupled with a high cc support he might be usefull, but overall he isn't made for ganking

For me it's not about his inherent ganking potential but the fact that your teammate can go in without caring about the conditions of the fight (most of the times) and then you show up, place a shield and a heal and it completly turns a fight. While this is not exactly ganking it usually works out quite well for me.

I think we should thank Sofa for this, the hero and item discussion was his idea and this thread is already growing nice and interesting :) I enjoyed reading all the inputs and I see new faces! Way to go!

abaddon has a potencial to be pretty good roamer due to his ability to make him and his teammates dive towers pretty safely. If there's someone with disable or movement speed slow, it can work pretty well ut requires all people involved in ganks to know where limit of aphotic lies.

Curse of Avernus is really good at level 1 now, he's far from the worst hero for Boots of Speed first Singsing style roaming. Besides he's not that level dependent, 1 point in shield and 1 point in curse, you're set.

It's interesting just how many different builds and stuff people have for him.

My 2p. I'd say his ideal position is probably #4. He needs more equipment to be useful than a #5 gets. #3 possibly if you can somehow devise a solo laning position that he can manage successfully, but that generally means going duals and giving him a support. Likely leaving you with ****py initiation options (i.e. Abaddon runs in and starts hitting people).

I'd note one really useful thing is to pick him against teams with "uncontrollable" damage. E.g. Macropyre and March of the Machines. You can go take a bath in that stuff with Blade Mail on, or just use it as free heal when it suits.

Big weakness is lack of stuns / castable slow - meaning he's not a particularly good roaming or zoning support. He's a bit like Omniknight in that you're just not that good at taking people down early on.

Skills wise - I'd say you should max Mist Coil first 90% of the time as a support (even if you don't start skilling it til 3). The damage/absorb change on Aphotic Shield is seriously meh, only the CD improve really helps, and it costs more mana that you probably don't have. Don't forget that Mist Coil heals you under your ult, and can also be used to deny yourself on low health.

Builds...there are lots of viable items on him, most types of boots, both utility, aura and even some damage items ( Curse of Avernus is a mild damage steroid). I'd say the major options once you've got some basics are either to head down the Aghanim's Scepter route and go for teamfight/tanking (self-activating still helps your team), aura builds with Vlads/etc, or "don't ignore me" build with MOM/Basher.

Personally I'm not that fussed on Mechansm with him.

On the pro level, the lack of control makes him a difficult pickup, and his farming requirements are also not easy to squeeze into a team. In pubs, people often misundertand his abilities and make daft mistakes, he's tough to feed with, and/or being able to get your team mates out of the stupid mess they got themselves in to can be invaluable.

Good post.

As abaddon you don't really gank, you turn around a gank. When you get experience in roaming you can also learn when the enemy roams and than you can intercept them as abaddon. Also abaddon goes well togheter with a ganklike hero to support him during the gank. He doesn't set up a gank he make sure the gank goes well or the enemy ganks fail.

Also you can always just run under the tower and hit someone, especialy when you are level 6. Initiating fights with Borrowed Time is also an option by running into people or letting them hook you or stuff.

Btw an abbadon can perfectly destroy a Reverse Polarity. When you get rped just use Borrowed Time than Aphotic Shield another ally and finally you can even use a Force Staff and or Glimmer Cape on another ally. If you also have a Mekansm or greaves, there is no way you lose a teamfight.

First of all, thanks to Safecyn for a beautiful first post on this topic!
Also, kudos to Sofa for the suggestion, it's nice to see such an effort to keep the forum afloat! :D

Now, to the topic.

I personally always play Abaddon as position 5, maxing Mist Coil first for a 4-2-1-1 build at level 8.
Although the heal in itself is impressive, I normally go with this build because of the absurd nuke potential early on. I don't think I've seen this talked about in this thread, but the fact that self damage from Mist Coil adds to breaking your own Aphotic Shield, easily abusable at early levels. At level 3 with a 2-1-0 build, Aphotic Shield will break by an additional of just 10 damage, and deals a total of 260 damage with the Mist Coil! This is considerably huge at level 3 (pretty much only Lina and Zeus can rival that at level 3), about half of the HP of most agi / int heroes.

But then again, I've been absolutely rekted by core Abaddon building mjolnir, Sange and Yasha, and Mask of Madness to end the game before 30 minutes, so... in good faith I cannot downplay its effectiveness.

Anyhow, for my item builds I normally go for the usual Tranquil Boots / Soul Ring abuse, but there are some games where nobody builds Mekansm and I am in mood for Guardian Greaves. If I get lucky and have some extra golds to spend after wards/tp/cour/smoke/tango (god! support life is hard), I'd go for a Vladmir's Offering and then Aghanim's Scepter rush, probably with Blink Dagger before aghs if needed. I just don't think Abaddon need too many items to be scary strong, and Aghanim's Scepter is pretty much a 'win-teamfight-for-free' item, too valuable to be hold off for too long.

Huh. I see people saying "Maxing Aphotic Shield is a given" and then other people saying "I always max Mist Coil first".

Maybe we could break this down: Why does one side prefer maxing their respective skill over the other?

For example -

Heal
MC: +50/level
AS: +30/level

Cooldown
MC: -0/level
AS: -2/level

Mana
MC: +10/level
AS: +5/level

Mist Coil also uses health. Both can be used for damage.

From this point of view, the strength of MC outshines AS, but it costs more to sustain a lot of casts of MC.

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Also, there is a myth where people say "Don't Shield yourself while having Borrowed Time! The shield absorbs the damage and you won't heal from it!"

I've heard this a lot, but after doing some research, it actually isn't true. Shield has a lower priority than Borrowed Time, meaning that the shield won't actually absorb any damage if you have borrowed time running.

So that's kinda cool.