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Power Treads
Ring of Aquila
Magic Wand
Wraith Band
Observer and Sentry Wards
Town Portal ScrollSo I know this is going to sound crazy but hear me out before you jump to conclusions. After watching many recent high level Drow/Visage matches and noticing many of the weaknesses of trying to go for such a draft (since when a Drow or Visage is seen being picked or neither being banned then the opposite team tries to steal one; as well as the obvious weaknesses of picking an all-ranged draft that is bad at standing and fighting good jump lineups due to their squishiness) has led me to theorycraft how to make use of Drow Ranger and more reliably draft a strong lineup around her.
The basis of my drafting strategy is as follows:
-Start by banning Visage. This will discourage the enemy team from picking Drow and will also make them think that you won't pick Drow either since Visage/Drow synergy is well known at this point. This allows you to pick Drow late in the draft, making the strategy hard to predict.
-The core of this lineup is based around picking multiple hard carries that will not have to build damage items but can build tank/utility instead since they will be getting their damage output buffed up significantly by the hero composition. It's also important to select ranged heroes that can get beefy in their builds to overcome the main weakness of common Drow drafts. For this reason I suggest picking priority in the draft go like this:
1st pick: Gyrocopter (To be played mid, alternatives can be Dragon Knight, Invoker or Windranger if Gyrocopter is taken by enemy first)
2nd pick: Vengeful Spirit (To be 5 position support; alternatives can be Io or Oracle (only if neither Venge or Io are available)
3rd pick: Luna (Safe lane farmer, the reason is because of her nuke damage and hero attack damage aura which will make the rest of this draft much stronger once grouped up. Shouldn't need an alternative pick because Luna is not very popular but if she is banned/picked then an alternative that can work is Shadowfiend due to high nuke damage, tanky buildup and armor reduction aura. Switch places with him and Gyrocopter mid if you have to pick Shadowfiend).
4th pick: Drow Ranger (4th position support!??! I know you're probably thinking wtf at this point. But think about it, Drow does not really need a lot of farm to serve her primary function, which is to make the rest of your team right-click really hard. Even if she does get a lot of farm the enemy team tends to pick good initiators to close the gap on her and kill her fast. But what if instead of putting a bunch of farm on her, you just get some cheap wraith bands on her and let her jungle to get levels/stand way in the back while the rest of the of the team goes for pickoffs and towers in the midgame. Her lane will not be weak and with her frost arrows she can go for kills in lane or protect her carry with silence.)
5th pick: Morphling (Offlaner. He will be your tanky initiator and he can even transition into a carry since the rest of your lineup will be buffing up his right-click. With this kind of draft he won't need much farm to be a threat. Morphling really shouldn't be hard to snag since he's not very popular at the moment. But if he is banned/picked then some decent alternatives that can serve a similar function are Phoenix and Windranger)
A little added note for those that don't believe that Drow doesn't need alot of farm to serve her primary function:
In a standard game where Drow is the safelane farmer, she tends to build items like Power Treads, Manta/SNY, BKB, Butterfly, Satanic/MoM with the 6th item varying wildly (Common choices include Shadowblade, Blink Dagger, Skadi, Daedalus or MKB). At lvl 16 Drow has 136 base agility (with ultimate) and grants her ranged team mates 49.1 attack damage. With these items she gains an extra 53 agility at the least and 88 at the most to grant her team mates a total of 68.2-80.8 attack damage. However, to grant this bonus damage she needs to farm ~11,500-18,000 gold.
In a support position with cheap items like Power Treads, Aquila, a Wand and a Wraith Band (with the other two slots open for a TP and Wards or something else support related) Drow can grant her team mates 58.5 bonus damage at level 16 while only needing to farm ~3400 gold! That's 72% of the most damage she could possibly offer her team mates with only 19% of the required farm! Additionally, because she's not the main farmer for the team, she can freely stand far from danger in fights since her personal DPS will not be as important, which will allow her team mates that are tankier/have more mobility to stand in the thick of combat while still being significantly buffed by having her on the team.
So what will this kind of lineup look like in action? The team will have high nuke damage due to the choice of mid and carry. It will also have the standard high right-click due to Drow's aura and other auras from the team. It will also have a strong frontline despite having ranged heroes since all the heroes can build tanky while still having good utility and right-click. This kind of lineup will have good aoe, good rosh-clearing, good ancient clearing, good jungle farming, good tower pushing, decent pickoff and much better teamfight than a standard Drow/Visage lineup. It will also scale much better into lategame and not need too much farm since it's all based around buffing the heroes' damage with little-to no items.
What do you guys think? I'd love to see something like this attempted in a pro game someday.
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