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Ability draft is a new mode for Dota 2 but one that has been around since the original. It is a pool of almost all the heroes who have 4 abilities no more or less. You are tossed into a draft where your hero is randomly assigned and there is a pool of 12 heroes abilities to choose from.
The Good
Whats good here is you get an excellent sampling of the heroes in dota and their abilities. You get to see and use combinations that before could only be done as a pair or not at all, but here you can experiment and learn about many of this expansive games characters and abilities. Of course you also sometimes get to have some absurdly OP abilities together and just farm your opponents to your hearts content.
The Bad
You may get stuck against the unassailable divided we stand character, or stuck with the owner of that ultimate Meepo himself rocking a tremendous 42 starting damage as melee. Most of these things can be overcome in certain situations, but if ability draft sometimes you get the short straw and are going to eat it all game.
This guide has some tips on being the op guy and avoiding being Meepo, even if you are actually meepo.
Almost more important than your first pick is taking notice of who your hero is. There are some abilities that regardless of hero are being drafted first. In this order, Divided we stand, Chemical Rage, and Permanent Invis (there may be times when perm invis goes before rage). Beyond these three abilities the hero you received should greatly factor into what abilities you take, though there are exceptions.
First you need to assess your hero and what they are good at, and what they need to be successful. The heroes themselves are balanced around their abilities and the more you play with them the more you can see this. This becomes especially important in ability draft as you can use this to your advantage and to avoid pitfalls of certain heroes. A perfect example for this is Clinks. With searing arrow as one of his base abilities you will notice he sports a pitiful base damage of 40, as he is supposed to have searing arrow, which more than makes up for this. So when you get a hero like clinks you should immediately look to replace this lost damage with either another unique attack modifier or really strong passive.
The reverse of this is true as well, if you are treant protector who comes with an ungodly starting damage of 88. Why not make him ranged and hit harder by drafting searing arrow? you should its fantastic.
Another great example of your heroes base abilities being very important is a character like Phantom Assassin. In her normal build she comes equipped with Blur, an absolutely fantastic ability for drafting. Now PA is balanced around having blur and is rather squishy. When you have a character like PA or say Medusa, you need to keep in mind if I do not get some sort of defensive ability I will be a very very juicy target. You dont necessarily need to pick your heroes defensive ability, things like stealth or a replacement ability work well, but don't go all dps or you may find yourself dead before you can even fire a shot.
You should always be looking for abilities that can be taken advantage of by a hero with a different skill set. Another example of this is drafting really strong melee magical abilities on int heroes. Things like storm hammer or purification. The key to these moves being especially successful on int heroes is they potentially become spamable. Keep this in mind when you are int hero, the melee based characters abilities often do more damage at a lower cooldown. This is because they are balanced by mana, something that is not a problem for and int hero.
After accessing your hero next it is time to decide what to pick first. There is a lot that goes into this decision, including will this ability even be around when my turn is up.
You want to get an idea of what you want your character to be very quickly, and to eye usually two abilities you plan on pairing together to make your hero go, this may not always be possible if you draft very early, and sometime you just have to pick something strong and pray there is something useful on the swingback.
I would love to make a giant draft board with all the abilities ranked or order of when they should be/are selected. I am going to do a small version of that here. These are some abilities you should absolutely target early, and never expect to last very long.
Divided We Stand, Chemical Rage, Permanent Invis, Grow, Overpower, Cou De Grace(not my cup of tea), Poison Attack, Searing Arrow, Burning Spear, Berserkers Blood, Take aim, Fiery Soul, Aftershock, Enchant Totem, Tide bringer, Essence shift, Storm Hammer, Untouchable.
There are certainly more abilities to add to this list, but these are some of the most powerful/drafted early abilities you will see. If you want any of these you will almost always have to draft them in the first round, especially since most of these will not be available in any individual game. I would consider these all "Tier 1 abilities" meaning if you get this with your first pick you should be in good shape moving forward. Some of these will require something to pair it with to be successful, EX(Fiery soul, Aftershock).
You may have notices something about almost all of these abilities as well, they all have a high potential for upping your damage output, while this is important, when you are in a spot where your hero just inst going to much damage, never hesitate to just go for a nice strong disable with your first pick, earth spike, impale, chaos bolt something like that. The reason storm hammer is on the list and none of the other aoe stuns are, is just that fact that hits so hard and stuns in a small aoe area, its the gold standard of im taking a stun with my first pick.
After Narrowing down what your first pick is going to be, you need to start planning an idea for what to do moving forward. Of course this is an ever changing thing as the ability you have your heart set on might get picked by the person right in front of you. A few things to keep in mind, ALWAYS HAVE BACKUPS, not backup BACKUPS. This is so important with just a 4 second window in which to make your pick. If the ability you are targeting gets picked you need to have a plan immediately in place for your next pick and moving forward. Other wise you will get stuck auto drafting or picking something that just inst right for what your build is going to be. Also be careful not to pigeon hole yourself with an ability that wont be effective unless you get some second ability to pair it with
Easy Example(Dont pick Eclipse Assuming you will get lucent beam, you will probably end up with an ult that is a fancy light show)
Hard Example (Taking aftershock with your first pick might be really tempting, but unless you get it late or there are several short cd abilities to pair it with, you may end up being able to hardly use it at all.
Next you want to keep in mind a few things, do I have a way to close and or finish people. It might seem really cool to have enchant totem, mana break, and feral impulse. Man I am going to hit people so hard! but are you really? Are you even going to hit them at all? With this build I would toss the mana break in lue of something like Viscous nasal goo, you wont hit as hard, but your opponent wont be getting away either.
Also keep in mind what are the team fights going to look like as the draft moves on. Wow were in the second round and the opposing team has 4 stuns two of which are aoe, and we have one single target stun. This is a recipe for a quick loss or a quick win. Almost any nice strong carry build can be over come by the other team having so much AOE and stun your team just explodes whenever they meet. Sometimes you may have to pass up that sweet ability to buff your auto attack damage to get something to slow the other team down in a team fight, never underestimate the power of disable in ability drafts.
I do plan on adding a key combinations section in here as well, which will outline some of the better abilities to pair together. I hope for now this is a good base as for the things you need to look for when playing ability draft.
Agility heroes tend to be my least favorite characters to get in a draft, especially if they are melee agility heroes EX Meepo.
The reason for this is because agility heroes tend to be balanced through their abilities, most of which will get picked early because they are strong. So what ends up happening most often if you can do good damage but you didn't get that ability that is supposed to keep you from dying and you are just to squishy, you are half health before you even get near your target.
So whenever I am given an agility hero to start there are a few things I look for. Number 1 is essence shift on the board? This is by far and away one of the absolute best abilities you can get as an agility hero especially if you are ranged. If you are lucky enough to get essence shift all you have to do is get some abilities to make you survivable and to boost attack speed, as your damage output will be completely handled by essence shift, I would follow this same guideline with my item build. Attack speed, and escape.
Beyond essence shift I will look for any kind of stealth, and abilities like blur and backtrack that mitigate damage completely through dodge, the other tanky abilities tend to be less effective on character with smaller health pool. Ex (I am dead before I even get to the full 16 stacks of reactive armor)
Of course never overlook the ability to turn your agility melee hero into ranged with poison attack searing arrow ect... this can go along way to your survivablity as well.
Also keep an eye out for marksmanship if you are ranged or can get a ranged ability as the damage output for some of the characters is just absurd, think sniper with an extra 80 agility. Some of the heroes you can treat more like str heroes ( juggernaught, Ursa) and some you can lean more of a caster route (naga siren, medusa). You will have to adjust your items accordingly to deal with this but trying to melee people with naga siren is just begging for death.
Again the important thing to remember with agility heroes is you will need an escape/defensive ability. Without one of those you are a glass cannon who will shatter easily.
In the next few sections I am going to lay out a few ideas of good builds to go for depending on the type of character you have, and what you should scan the draft board for as soon as you see your are a strength hero.
You enter the draft and the first thing you need to assess is your hero, you look up and notice you are a strength hero, next you should be aware of where you pick. Early in the draft you want to look for something that is a real heavy hitter (chem rage, grow) if you are later in the draft you want to look for two abilities you could pair together to be effective.
Now it is not often you get to just choose one of the tier 1 ultimate's so the first thing I always look for is something that will make me ranged. Ex (Poison attack, searing arrow, burning spear, take aim, Glaives of Wisdom,frost arrows, arcane orb) These are also in order of which I would draft them given all of them being available. This order can change based on some outside factors, Arcane orb jumps to the top of the list if it can be paired with aftershock or fiery soul, I would also bump up burning spear if it can be paired with some sort of tanky ability, dragons blood for example.
If you get something ranged you are pretty much already set moving forward, keep in mind you don't want to many use abilities beyond this, as alot of your mana will be going into making your self ranged. I look for passives that are not unique attack modifiers (crippling bite, feral impulse) and something that will let me close when necessary, a slow, a stun, a blink, or something to boost speed. You want to be able to chase someone while still auto attacking them at range, this is the key to success (that's why poison attack is number 1)
Now if you cannot get something to make you ranged you have a few other options, you can build a tank. This is a character with usually 2 abilities that make you last longer. Things like reactive armor and blur, or spellshield and untouchable, on a big beefy strength hero having two of these abilities together can make you almost unkillable. You want to grab some sort of initiate/aoe ultimate that will allow you to run in first and your teammates come in guns blazing behind you. This is going to tend to be more effective mid and late game as you wont have an ability to kill with very early. I also highly recommend once you become very tanky to purchase a divine rapier. It may be a scary thought, but when you have blur, backtrack, a 30% resist cloak, and 3000 hp you wont be losing that rapier unless you engage 1v5.
Here is a short list of all the abilities I would classify as defensive they will not be ranked in any real order as they are very situational. (Untouchable, backtrack, blur, reactive armor, dragons blood, kraken shell, spell shield, windrun) There are probably more but those are the ones I key in on whenever available. Too truly make a tank you really need two of these abilities, you can do it with one and some items, but two and use your items too buff damage seems to be the way to go. The best ultimate's for this are things like pulse nova, ravage, freezing field, things that do a lot of aoe damage.
Sometimes you get stuck making a more generic hero with out a lot of fancy abilities, you want to just aim for an ability that will carry your damage(curse of avernus), and something that will let you close or hold enemies in place(open wounds), you cant kill them if you cant hit them.
Lastly though not the best option sometimes you get into a game that is heavy on int heroes and their abilities, you certainly can make an str hero with all use abilities that do damage or stun, you will just need to get arcane boots and stack mana with almost all of your items. My recipe for that is arcane boots, a scepter of Eul, and maybe a bloodstone after.
I feel starting out with an int hero is the most level playing field when it comes to hero selection. They all sort of have the same stats and can do the same things. For example the difference between Drow ranger and Naga siren is sizable, and they are going to need differing abilities to be effective. Yet characters like lina and crystal maiden without their abilities are almost the same toon. Now of course some heroes will have better speed and stat growth than other, but for the most part you are just going to get a bunch of mana and you can feel free to over load on use abilities.
Int heroes also give you the most range as far as what you can build for. You can be an auto attacking champion, someone with massive burst, support, healer, or aoe disabler, or a mixture of these things.
I try and look early in drafts as int heroes for how many other int hero abilities are in this draft, aka things with a relatively low cool down that cost a decent amount of mana and hit really hard. These abilities dont necessarily have to belong to an into hero to fall into this category.
Once you have accessed what is available to you, its time to decide what you want to be. I myself love to go with either what I call a Burst Fire Build, or Aoe Disabler build. I will go into each type of build here and things to key on when you are making them.
BurstFire!!!
This is my favorite type of build to make when I am an int hero just because it always leads laughter throughout the game. The key to making this build is pairing three abilities together that do heavy damage to a single target usually. The two best ultimate's for this are Laguna blade, and Finger of death, It can also work with scream of pain, and a few other ults that do heavy damage. I tend to go for this build when either laguna blade or finger are avaiable.
Once you have decided to go burst fire, start your draft with one of those ultimates unless you are nearly positive none of the heroes behind you will take it before it comes back to you. Next you want to look for other abilities that do alot of damage single target or not. These can be a mixture of stuns and just straight damage but you want stuff that does 280 damage or higher for the most part. I love abilities like Aether shock, laser, purification, void, Storm Hammer, and so on. Just look at the ability see how much damage it does and your off. You want to get usually at least two of these types of abilities to pair with your ultimate. Once you have these in place just add up the damage in your mind and it will make sense. For example lest say you were able to get storm hammer, laser, arcane aura, and laguna blade. At level 9 Storm Hammer 320, Laser 320, Laguna blade 450. yes thats 1090 damage you can hurl at someones grill instantly at level 9. This build is really fun and hilarity will ensue on the first person you turn to ash inside of two seconds. The last thing to remember here BUY A DAGON. That is the final key to this, with resistance and what not I often find myself getting characters to an ebb of health as they run away after I have fired all my goodies. Dagon has fantastic range and is the perfect finisher with this build. Get it before you get scepter as the 400 base damage it provides for 2700 is more than the added bonus damage to either finger or laguna blade for the 4200 price tag.
Aoe Disabler!
This is my second favorite thing to do with an int hero, and will go a long long way towards your team winning the game once the lane phase ends. Your goal here is to get as many abilities as you can together that do aoe damage, stun, ,slow, and root. This build is pretty straight forward they key to it is making sure there is enough Aoe disable in the game for you to attain a proper build. Things like earth spike, impale, burrowing strike, light strike aray, split earth, storm hammer. You want to aim for say impale early and light strike aray around the third round. Next keep an eye of for something that does nice aoe damage/slow, things like frost blast, and crystal nova are perfect. There are a few great ults for this as well, Ravage is the king, reverse polarity is nice, scream of pain, poison nova, Echo Slam, epicenter, Void zone all work as well.
Here is an example build and it will become very clear what you should be doing if you make an aoe disabler. Impale, Split Earth, Crypt Swarm, Ravage. Your draft order would most likely be Impale, ravage, split earth, and crypt swarm. Once the game starts and you have everything leveled. You open with Impale, immediately followed by split earth because of the delay, launch your crypt swarm, and then hit ravage. Do you really think anyone who eats all of this is surviving after? Thats over 1000 damage per player hit, and a combined total of roughly 8 seconds of stun. If there is anyone around adding to the dps you can wipe a team easily with that kind of output.
The next few sections are going to be dedicated to the true top tier abilities. How to make a build that will be really fun, and possibly how to kill an opposing player who got one of them (easier said than done)
Small disclaimer: Divided we stand is broken and should be removed from the mode, there is lots of balancing issues in ability draft, that is kind of the point, but a player with any skill at all should almost single handedly win game with divided we stand.
So you went first over all in the draft or had people dumb enough in your game to pass on divided we stand and you got it. Now what?
It is very hard to guage what will be making it back to you when you have DWS, but I will give you an idea of what to look for and why this ability is so powerful. Simply put DWS is op because when you select and ability each one of your clones has the ability to cast it as well. Let that set in for a moment (think 5 storm hammers), that makes some abilities while normally not great freaking amazing, and amazing abilities just flat broken.
So as a character with DWS throw hero type out the window, you want abilities that do AOE damage and stun, possibly a heal if you can get one. I am going to list out here not the best abilities to pair with DWS but abilies that might actually last long enough in a draft to make it back to you in the second and third round. Ya storm hammer is nice but its not ever making it 20 picks deep into a draft.
So here is a list of abilities to look for that may last long enough for you to actually get them, and of course you will see a trend here, and snag any ability that fits the description of High aoe gamage/disable.
(Aeither shock, Purification, Split Earth, Light Strike aray, Quill spray, Crystal Nova, Frost Blast, Shadow Wave, Fissure, Impale, Earth Spike, Burrowing Strike,)
There are certainly others, but any one of these will go along way towards making you DWS amazing. You want an ability that you can tab through each of your clones and use on a target, so just hitting your action key then tab action key tab. Things like Split earth and light strike aray are amazing, if the first one hits they are all going to hit and for massive damage. Just imagine getting hit by 5 split earths in a row, and by the time the last one hits the first one is off cool down.
Next I love to get a heal like purification, shadow wave, natures attendants, or healing ward. Living armor is fine too, but hard to use mid fight. The best part of this is when you have purification. Watch as 4 people assault one of your clones, and you go from being nearly dead to full health and heroes just falling in your wake as the purifications land. It takes time to adjust to the micro but if you aim for that aoe damage/disable you will be waltzing through people. Final fun fact drafting Natures call or Mirror image is fun and hilarious.
Also always buy arcane boots, you can use them on each clone, quick and easy 500 mana to keep you on the move. Last thing dont go mid with DWS you get the experience from kill with each instance of your clone. So the person laning with you will level slower, but you will level at the pace of the mid lane, while allowing your team to have a second high level character.
Now how to counter a hero with DWS. Firstly good luck, if they know how to build a good DWS toon you will have little luck overcoming them hammering you with stuns or aoe damage. But there are a few tricks to do this. Anything you can do to sepearate one of the clones from the pack is key, this might be the hook ability, or a force staff. You want to target one of the clones not the hero itself, and it will need to be a team effort, all of you focusing the clone down as quickly as possible. Again this is easier said than done, but separation slows and burst is the only way. Again good luck, in games with DWS whoever drafts it wins 90% of the time unless they get rolled super early.
Mmmm sweet sweet permanent invis, So fun to play. They key too Permanent invis being amazing is simple, almost all the abilities in this mode will not take you out of invisibility when used. You may never have noticed this when playing against a Riki because its really just smoke screen that makes use of this and he will pop soon after using it anyway. But any ability you draft can be used without losing stealth, so only when you auto attack does it take you out.
This creates a great premium on certain abilities that normally are 2nd and third round picks. Your goal here is going to put out as much sustained damage as possible hopefully without ever needing to leave stealth, allowing you to roam the map freely and gank and unsuspecting heroes. I will list here some of the key and most fun abilities I look for whenever permanent invis is on the table.
Rot: This is kind of the best of the best, but isn't perfect. This a great ability to target for a few reasons, you can just stand next to someone doing constant damage, anyone caught in the jungle is almost guaranteed to die with the slowing effect it provides, and of course you have room for two more abilities! The best ability to get with rot is sticky napalm, you will give yourself away as you stack the sticky napalm, but just a couple stacks while rot is going and they will die in a hurry. Of course all of the abilities i mention here will be a good fit together as they all do the same thing.
Unstable concoction: This ability while a nice stun is a lower tiered skill because it can be difficult to land and has a very negative effect if you don't land it. Both of the downsides of this are mitigated by the Perm Invis, making it much stronger in general. The idea here is to scope out your victim, let the time go all the way down and unleash your stun on them. You will get the max damage and stun time from this, and can freely exit stealth to finish your target it most cases. Getting hit by an unstable concoction you cant even see is devastating i have been on both ends of this transaction.
Sacred Arrow: Just like Unstable concoction this ability has major upside and downside most of which is mitigated by perm invis. It has an insanely long stun time and damage threshold but is so difficult to land. Yet when you are invisible you can line up that perfect shot to nail your unsuspecting victim. I long range sacred arrow will almost every opponent you hit with it.
These IMO are the cream of the crop to look for later in drafts, of course the normal ones like storm hammer, earth spike, impale are all great if you can get your hands on them, I am going to list a few more here that are useful as well, Homing Missile, Flak Cannon, Rocket Barrage!!, Diabolic Edict, all of these will pump out some heavy damage in a short period of time. Another way to think of this is you are a burstfire hero just instead of having the hard hitting ult your victims cant see you.
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