Drow Ranger utilization

Looking at the typical selections in TI3 the trend will very likely carry over to team matchmaking and Cm games, but from what else I saw, suprise picks can make a huge difference, the prime example being mushi's Ursa Warrior. Drow falls under this category for me, a suprise pick that can synergize well with heroes commonly picked.

First of all she's a safe bet pick wise in terms of availability, she's pretty much invisible. Safe her for last, she won't be banned or picked. Next, what can she synergize well with? My mind immediately goes to her precision aura, and Gyrocopter immediately pops into mind, making him hit harder in early game means: nightmare to lane against, faster farming potential with flak cannon. Another marquee hero would be Weaver, making his damage far less pathetic early on is no bueno for the other guys. An obvious choice would be Luna, their auras stacking would be dirty (if they stack), or even PoTM, giving her more ganking power, simply put leveling precision aura fast can be a pretty big deal, add in drow rangers solid pushing power with her damage output, and her innate killing power.
Say you take drow, she's gonna need mid lane, or safe lane solo if you're running an aggressive trilane. She could very well be a liability, she needs a shadow blade for escapes, but that's easily mitigated, although the escape speed is pretty big, toss a silence and shadowblade out.

She could also fail miserably solo, leading to her being a walking aura, although we may be able to make her good back mid game after getting a couple levels in her ultimate. Hell maybe grab a Midas if need be and catch up, the atk spd is worth it alone.
I may just be spouting off randomly, but, she can run great with a good lineup around her, just be sure to ban batrider, he'd definitely ruin her day, constantly zone her out and more than likely kill her.
A likely team composition: drow-mid, gyro+venge+counter pick support, rubick, Sd bane visage, and an offlane dark seer (vacuum and aoe stun would be nice, but gyros ultimate works well here obviously), or a control hero like mag or enigma..kinda random but very well could work.

Thoughts?

Doubt so. The reason why Drow Ranger is not picked for TI3 because of her squishiness. To begin with, she have nearly no escape mechanisms because her slow can be easily countered by a stun/nuke. One of the easiest way to counter her Frost Arrows is by standing on a cliff (where the fog of war can block her vision, since she is below the cliff). To make it simple, she can be easily killed if you can go close enough to kill her.

One of my friend took an Ursa against Drow Ranger. As we know, Ursa have no ranged skills and rely on auto-attacking to dish out damage. If he can't get close, he's a goner. What happened was, Ursa brought Force Staff and FORCE himself towards her and started bashing her up, killing her instantly.

In the match, we were playing with the no Shadow Blade rule.

While some say Shadow Blade will help her, it is not reliable, too. Sure, in lower pubs nobody buys dust and wards so you can be a killing machine. In the Internationals (TI) or even competitive play, supporters dump wards everywhere and people will carry Dust too, so that robs you of your element of surprise and escape.

In TI, do notice that most heroes that goes mid are the ones that really need the level, like Pudge and Rubick. Because there are most important in teamfights, there are rarely space for the not-really-mid heroes like Sniper and Drow Ranger.

In your team composition, I would rather put Rubick in the mid because he works there better than Drow Ranger.

The problem here is Luna and Vengeful Spirit are far superior.

Luna's aura gives solid damage to both melee and ranged allies. Vengeful Spirit actually gives equal or less damage than Luna does but she is a support. So if you really need some attack boosting auras, one of these two will do depending on which role you need. Luna is overall a better carry than Drow Ranger and Vengeful Spirit provides more utility and gives your overall team more space.

The only problem here is that these auras are not global, but if you were to support a carry with an aura, that carry probably won't be solo ganking anyway.

This is interesting for me because I am still early days with DOTA (84/72/2) and even I have noticed now that even in all pick pub games, as I climb the experiance ladder, Drow seems to be picked a lot less often and when Drow is picked, she does not do the pub stomping I was used to when I first started out (to the point of picking her myself and then unpicking at the last moment).

I think a lot of her fear comes from everyones early experiances with the game where you are ultimately inexperianced in the ways of DOTA2 - especially myself who never played DOTA1, but now she is not that scary and unless the team has fed her through silly gaming, she is easily countered - I actually enjoy those rare games where i face her with Viper or OD in the mid lane :)

did anyone actually pick a drow during ti3?

what about slardar? I think Tongfu or Orange picked him up for 1 game.. I expected more tbh..

It's not that she was picked I was more or less theorizing the benefits she could bring to the table, I do vaguely remember her being picked in competetive dota 1.
Her squishiness, lack of flash farming, and need for solo exp all add into why she's not picked, but similarly she can still perform, although she was more or less picked years ago for global pushing power, but her passive isnt as strong as the original dota.

Still, I believe she has her merits, and is at least worth a shot purely for her damage output, global passive and pushing potential

I feel like drow fits no role. Drow needs to be safe. If you solo/duo with her she can be ganked easily. If you go for a trilane, your drow needs to be level 6 as soon as possible to deal some damage and in a trilane, it needs more time. Like mentioned before damage aura is not an enough reason to pick her

I believe she WAS picked a bit before in competitive dota 2 though, to support Shadow Fiend with her aura.

They won the game, but Drow Ranger really didn't have enough impact from what I saw.

Back in the days of dota one Drow Ranger's aura was a % of the hero's damage not Drow's agility so LGD has a double rapier medusa getting around 200 bounes damage.

As of right now I see her as a 4 slot support. She has a 625 range, 0 second cool down 50% move speed slow. A silence that has the ore team silenced for longer than they aren't aura damage amp for the carry. Her only non-support ability is her ultimate. Skip it at six and late game use it for an E-blade damage since Drow can attack under the effect of E-blade.

I could see her being semi-useful as a support (even though there are many better alternatives), she can't really carry above low-mid pubs because of her ult's unreliability, squishyness, and her lack of escape/mobility. Back in dota1 when she had a flat bonus to AGI from the ult, she was much stronger, since you just had to get a bit of durability and you had very good dps (since you couldn't slaughter her damage potential just by standing next to her). As of now, she's basically a glass cannon that gets jammed all the time.