Cuttleboss' Guide to Eating Out Worlds [6.88]

Introduction

I am Cuttleboss, a public player who likes the nature of the game, but not much a heavy follower of the competitive scene. Today I will be writing about Outworld Devourer, a hero who is distinct for several reasons. He is one less than 10 int heroes that can only be played as a core, with no options for supporting whatsoever _{(the others, for those curious, are Storm Spirit, Puck, Tinker, Queen of Pain, Death Prophet, Batrider, and Invoker)}. The hero is also distinct for being one of the few INT heroes that focus on the power of right clicks over the power of spells. Among all INT late game heroes, he is tied for the highest carrying potential (with Storm) with the sting of his obscenely powerful orb, and the sheer growing danger he poses to his enemies just by attacking.

Fun fact, I actually started this guide back in the 6.84-6.85 era before OD's remake in 6.86, back when OD was among the worst heroes in the game and I tried to make him work. I took a break and did a Doom and Pugna guide, and then after that I came back to properly finish this guide with the new OD, who has just gone past his glory days.

Due to his level and item dependence that is almost unmatched by any INT hero, Outworld Devourer is always played as a carry hero, after the 6.87 nerfs he is to be played in the safelane only. He needs secure lane farm in order to reach his potential. For number's sake, he is almost always #1, possibly #2. This guide will not cover OD Mid, only OD safelane.

Outworld Devourer is notorious for several reasons. First is his massive scaling damage output, much of which is pure, making him a great counter against high armor heroes. Second is how much more dangerous he gets the longer he is allowed to run rampant in a fight attacking people and stealing their intelligence, and third is how terribly he farms and plays from behind, with few options if things didn't go quite well for him, especially because all his damage is stopped by Black King Bar.

As with all guides written by me, this guide is not concise, so this is not the alt-tab way.

Updates

July 14, 2016: Guide Created

Difficulty

Intermediate

by Bayneyjayney
"The blood sun rises, and if I feed, it's never going away."

Outworld Devourer is one hell of a hero. To an untrained eye, OD seems like the easiest hero in the world. You orb walk people with infinite mana in lane, then attack people in teamfights, rack up damage to blow up everyone and then do it with Sanity's Eclipse. But that is not always how it happens is it? No. OD is a hero that is hard to last hit with, is very dependent on a good laning phase, lacks comeback power, and is not a good ganker. Deaths are very costly on OD, so you better have a strong survival instincts before playing him.

Additionally, Astral Imprisonment is one of the most dangerous skills in its potential to completely screw over your team. I will go into why when I get into abilities. Basically, good imprisonment usage depends on very good ability awareness in terms of who used what.

Because of these factors, OD is moderately difficult to play, and newer players should stay far away from him.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Let's see what OD is suited for.

Pros: Save the universe from fate.
+ Extremely stellar late game presence, if farmed
+ Amazing base stats, with his abnormally high AGI, INT, armor and movespeed
+ Fantastic stat growth (7 in total, higher than almost all heroes), making him scale extremely well with leveling up.
+ One of only a few heroes that scales well with all three attributes (Only Medusa and Morphling scale with them to a comparable level)
+ Explodes illusions and summoned units with ease.
+ Right clicks are laced with pure damage, unable to be reduced by armor or magic resistance.
+ After a certain threshold, he stops losing mana while attacking
+ When pushing with his team, he keeps their mana up too
+ A solid counter to many carry heroes with his stat stealing and disable that misdirects them.
+ Can waste enemy crowd control skills, or prevent an ally from getting focused down.
+ Is very effective against tanky heroes, especially ones that lack burst damage.
+ Is among the most dangerous heroes in all Dota 2 to be left alive and attacking in a teamfight.

Cons: Everyone's gonna die anyway, Cthulhu does that.
- Between 15 damage spread, a huge frontswing, and slow missile speed, is rather hard to last hit with (especially given you can't use your orb or a quelling blade to help you)
- Notoriously bad health sustain, since he cannot grab items like Morbid Mask, and he doesn't use items that build from Ring of Health.
- Insanely item dependent, more than almost every other hero in the game
- Very level dependent, none of his skills are "strong" until fully maxed.
- Fragile, can easily be blown up or chainstunned to death
- Cannot harm heroes with magic immunity (can still astral himself or whoever that bkb'd hero is targeting)
- Early mana problems, especially if unlucky.
- Lacks pushing power, due to lack of strong waveclear and orb not working on towers.
- Very poor ganker, Astral is a terrible ganking spell and your ult CD is way too long
- Low range on both attacks and spells
- High downtime in his ultimate, which can be alleviated with Octarine Core.
- Low variety in item options

When to Pick?

With everything in mind, when does one pick OD?

Pick him if:

• Your team composition is not greedy, with 1 other core being ideal, since OD requires farm, but can take some time to come online, so you want one other person contesting your map for farm.
• Your team has gankers, because you are not good at it.
• Allies have spell spammers that benefit from Essence Aura
• Your team is armed with crowd control to make use of OD's damage output.
• Enemies chose heroes that focus on having long fights, not reliant on burst ( Faceless Void, Timbersaw, Slark, Abaddon, Oracle, Dazzle are all good examples)
• The enemy cores are reliant on their armor or magic resistance to survive (most AGI heroes fall into this category)
• You have supports that have heals to help with your sustain problem.
• Your enemies are reliant on a big single target stun to kill a key target ( Beastmaster, Batrider, and Shadow Shaman are good indicators)
• Your team has ways to protect you if the enemies go on you, whether in the form of AOE crowd control or buff (preferably dispel) skills
• Your team has a midgame source of damage that is able to penetrate enemy Black King Bars ( Templar Assassin, Bristleback, and Shadow Fiend are some examples)

Do not pick him when:

• The game is expected to be very active (OD takes more time to activate than most carries)
• Your team has no disables or nukes
• Your team has enough cores as it is and needs a less greedy pick
• Enemies are heavy on silences and/or stuns
• The enemy team is heavy on burst damage (Lookout for stunners with burst damage, like Lion, Lina, Sand King, and Earthshaker)
• The enemy team have picked Pugna and/or Nyx Assassin

Skill Build and Abilities

Outworld Devourer has a rather inflexible skillbuild. Almost always, you are maxing Arcane Orb and Essence Aura, as you need those two abilities skilled in order to actually control lanes and have good last hit damage. Astral is avoided until later, since you need Arcane in order to control your lane opponents and to easily farm the jungle. The other variation is one that puts early points into imprisonment to try to ward off gankers. Sanity's Eclipse is avoided generally at 6, because more points in your other skills, mainly Essence Aura, has to take priority, but if at any point getting it will secure you a kill, then level it.

Skill Build A: Max Orb and Essence Aura (Farmer and Lane controller)
1 Arcane Orb
2 Essence Aura
3 Arcane Orb
4 Essence Aura
5 Arcane Orb (if you are winning the lane) / Essence Aura (if you're losing)
6 Essence Aura/Arcane Orb/Sanity's Eclipse (SE for killing, else whatever you did not level)
7 Arcane Orb
8 Essence Aura
9 Astral Imprisonment/whateveryoudidn'tmax
10 Sanity's Eclipse/whateveryoudidn'tmax
11 Sanity's Eclipse
12-14 Astral Imprisonment
15 Stats
16 Sanity's Eclipse
17-25 Stats

Skill Build B: Max Essence Aura (Sustain, slower farmer, harder to kill, don't get Sanity's Eclipse at 6 because of a lack of Arcane Orb levels)
1 Astral Imprisonment
2 Arcane Orb
3-5 Essence Aura
6 Arcane Orb
7 Essence Aura
8 Astral Imprisonment
9 Arcane Orb
10-11 Sanity's Eclipse
12 Arcane Orb
13-14 Astral Imprisonment
15 Stats
16 Sanity's Eclipse
17-25 Stats


Let's briefly look at his abilities. If you want numbers, go view his wiki page.

Arcane Orb
Usage: Making your attacks hurt like hell, farming creeps, Orb Walking, Making yourself more and more powerful, charging up Sanity's Eclipse
Notes: This ability is what makes you among the most dangerous heroes to be left alive and attacking in a teamfight.
Prioritize targeting heroes with this ability early on, the Essence Aura section will tell you why.
OD damages based on his mana when it hits, not when he fires, beware of mana burners.
Use this to increase your damage when you are against a single opponent in lane, since it will make it easier to last hit.
This reduces an opponent's mana pool, very effective against low mana pool heroes like Bristleback and Troll Warlord.
This does not work on magic immune targets and does not stack with UAMs, so don't even try (except Skadi because it's just that good).


Astral Imprisonment:
Usage: Countering enemy stuns, prevent an ally or yourself from being focused down, (low levels) refilling your mana pool, farming waves of creeps (high levels), setting up allied stuns
Notes: Avoid using this on enemies unless you're setting up a stun, or catching the last person fleeing a teamfight. This skill forces your allies into a certain type of position that the opponent can easily counter, and it does not freeze the enemy's cooldowns, and most of all this skill has a short cast range even when maxed and attempting to use this skill offensively will immediately put you out of position.
If enemies are targeting you, this can be used on yourself to buy yourself some time for your team to help you out. Imprisonment on self also is useful for waiting out enemy Black King Bars.
When this skill is in low levels, you should use it on random creeps, since it will make Essence Aura more likely to proc, and it will cost less mana than your Arcane Orb. This helps with mana sustaining before you reach the magical 1600 threshold.
As this skill reaches high levels, use it to clear large creep waves, make sure you hit the creeps and get them low as the target is imprisoned.
If enemies are targeting your ally, and toss a stun, a slow, or a silence on them, you can cast this on that ally to protect them and waste that spell. This is especially good against spells like Primal Roar, Fiend's Grip, Shackleshot and Chaos Bolt
Synergizes well with Blink Dagger for escaping, as it prevents OD from being damaged for 4 seconds, so its easy to escape.
You cannot cast this on yourself or your allies when magic immune. This makes the "to BKB or not to BKB?" question harder, since you lose a lot of your personal advantages by getting that item.


Essence Aura
Usage: Refill Mana for mostly self and certain team members
Notes: Uses pseudo random distribution, meaning you should spam cast low level astral imprisonments to stay at high mana before you reach the 1600 threshold.
What is the "1600 threshold"? Well, basically, in order to sustainably use Arcane Orb at all times, you need 1600 mana pool if you have a maxed Arcane Orb. Essence Aura when maxed will restore 10% (it goes by 2.5% each level) of your mana pool back on average each cast (example: 1000 mana. 0.4x0.25x1000=100). When you attack a hero with Arcane Orb however, your mana pool rises, so you can still freely use your orb on enemy heroes at a much lower threshold.
Allies need to have a high mana pool to really use this skill, to put how low the restore is into perspective, if this skill is level 4, someone has 500 mana, and they cast a 75 mana spell, there is a 40% chance they will regain 125 mana, (0.4)(125) = 50 mana returned on average, less than each spell. Conversely, someone with 2000 mana casts a spell that costs 150 mana, they have a 40% chance to regain 500 mana, which averages out to 200 mana restored each spell cast on average, which is much more.


Sanity's Eclipse
Usage: Finishing Move usually for teamfights, Mana Burn on key heroes
{With Octarine} OD's Satanic.
Notes: This skill is ideally used once you get lots of Arcane Orb stacks up, especially if you are attacking your primary target at this time.
This skill's downtime is absurdly long, use it with care.
Hits units in astral imprisonment, who have no way to activate their spells and BKBs.
For some reason, enemy illusions do not take bonus damage from this ability, so you will have to attack the illusions to destroy them in many cases.
The radius gets a lot bigger as you level it up, so get to level 16 asap.
This skill has a mana burn based on max mana that will always go off, pay attention on who you catch, since proper use of this will prevent enemies from casting big spells like Black Hole.
This skill is absurdly useless if you're playing from behind, doing almost nothing to opponents with higher INT than you, and literally nothing to opponents that are magic immune. This is why OD cannot afford to fall behind in farm.

The Stages of the Game

Early Game:

By bioniclefusion
"Rawr!"

Laning: Outworld Devourer farms the safelane.
Mid: What the hell did I just say? If the midlane is an easy matchup ( Pudge? Timbersaw? Slark?) Then he can do it, especially if you plan on doing an early activation build, you can go there, but this guide will not teach any of that.

Safelane: In this lane, you want your support(s) to try to bully your lane opponent(s) because you are really a bit weak early on in your laning. Sure you have a bunch of armor, but you have trouble contesting last hits due to 3 factors, 15(!) damage spread, almost half second frontswing, and slow missile speed. Ideally you want to be very close to the creep wave to minimize missile speed, and constantly try to attack while spamming your “stop” key to get past your frontswing. Sorry, it sucks last hitting with a sluggish ranged hero without the option to just get a quelling blade. You also lack attack range, which means that poking the enemy without using your Orb is generally a bad idea.

However, once you have at least 2 levels in your Arcane Orb, preferably 3, you can start orb walking the enemies in the lane, which will not only make them scared to approach the lane and let you last hit uncontested, but will give you bonus damage to contest last hits from your lane opponents if they stick around. Just try to scrape as much as you can out of the lane in the early levels and the late levels you will generally gain an advantage.

An important note here is to sustain. Keep your health and your mana up. If health falls short, it’s not hard to kill you and OD does not recover well from early deaths, and if mana falls short, you lose your ability to control your lane. This is why OD prefers sustain based supports the most.

If it comes to killing your opponent, OD does not offer much use in terms of disables. His disable prevents his allies from hitting the target and has a comically low cast range in low levels, but he can offer a lot of damage with his orb, which even in low level will still do a solid ~20-30 damage in the first few hits, which can be enough to waste many a solo offlaner.


Offlane: I guess you’re fast and have high armor but… no, this is stupid, Slahser’s way OD for the current OD is terrible, getting early Shadow Blade sucks on him… this hero is extremely item+level dependent and you need secure farming….

Jungle?: That’s it, we’re moving onto the midgame section now.

Mid Game:

OD's midgame is pretty much farming for the most part, unless you’re against an enemy team that is stunningly weak in the midgame then group up with your team and push, abusing your aura hopefully with strong and cheap active spells, but try not to die or else you will lose. The hero is stunningly bad at ganking, as his Astral Imprisonment is a doubled edged sword in terms of time buying, and his only nuke has 160 second cooldown, so prioritize clashes if you are fighting.

Whatever lane you started on, you just farm it and Arcane Orb whoever is your lane opponent(s). Keep eyes on the map and be mindful of rotations. You can also farm jungle if the lanes are not safe. Join fights once you have enough damage and survival to not get blown up immediately by the enemies. Analyze drafts and determine when is the best time to fight your enemies, whether earlier or later. Also, be sure to not stand near the front of fights, OD cannot afford to be the one tanking disables and nukes for his team, because he will die, and use your imprisonment once you have some levels of it to protect allies or yourself if they come from behind.

Late Game:
by NicktheNikouT
"Oh my god, this staff looks so cool."

Outworld Devourer finally has some real presence at this point, that is, if farming went well. If it didn't, well... hope for the best. Outworld Devourer has a lot of power in the late game in teamfights if you have some attack speed and survivability. If you can get stacks of Arcane Orb, you can annihilate enemies with Sanity’s Eclipse. The thing to be very mindful of at this point is the cooldown on Sanity's Eclipse, because smart opponents are gonna try to fight when it's down. And remember, even though OD himself is not much a pusher due to a variety of reasons, you should still push with your team after won teamfights and end the game when the opportunity arises. You will need to use your Imprisonment properly to screw up enemy initiations in most games, so do not try to use it offensively in any fights unless you are chasing down the last enemy in a teamfight. Also don't forget to save buyback, as a hard carry and all, you want to be able to return to the fight if there is a need for Harbinger.

Item Build

Starting:
Null Talisman, Tango: This is the safest starting build, since it gives you last hit damage and sustain. You need as much damage as you can get your hands on, but you need to keep your health up too.

Early Game :
Hand of Midas: This item is optional, but you really want it if you do not take over the map within the first 25 minutes of the game. This is the most important item for a late game carry OD. But this item is very nice because it grants you attack speed to speed up farm, a huge boost to your experience (since you need your abilities maxed), and the gold is great too, especially paired with Octarine Core for 75 cooldown. Having a huge supply of reliable gold makes deaths much less costly for you too.

Boots Choices:
Arcane Boots: The preferred boots for farming, since it lets you get close to the 1600 threshold, and lets you refill you own or your ally’s mana, and you can easily disassemble it into Octarine Core.
Power Treads: The boots for clashes, since having bonus attack speed and stats can give you an edge. This allows for quickest activation.
Tranquil Boots: Despite your need for sustain, you need attack speed and mana pool boosts, and you do too much attacking to use this.
Phase Boots: Once again not the stats you want. Pick different boots.
Boots of Travel: Gotta go fast, gotta go fast, it is a very good boost to your movespeed. But really, being able to push back any lane is very important as the game goes on, and it lets you farm up a lot. Plus, these are the "buyback boots" for when you need to join a fight after buying back.

Core (Late Game Carry):
Force Staff: The core item you get on a late game carry OD, this is for you to prevent yourself from being mispositioned and killed. It does not add that much in the way of killing people until you have levels and other stats, but this is your core as a late game carry after Midas because you need to be alive in order to use Midas.
Octarine Core: The second core item you get on late carry OD. You get it much earlier in this build than others to expand your mana pool (and thus your Orb damage), your Midas rate, your Force Staff cooldown (you upgrade to Pike shortly after to bring it down further from 15 to 10.5), your ult cooldown, and some sustain for manfighting. This item is a big stepping stone to activating as a late game carry on OD, though you lack attack speed.

Core Choices (Mid Game Carry):
Blink Dagger: A decent choice on an early activating OD carry. It lets him easily finish people off, since OD already has significant damage output, and pairs well with Astral Imprisonment for escaping, since 4 seconds of invulnerability will make sure you get away.
Rod of Atos: A nice snowballing item for OD, since it adds a ton of health for dealing with people nuking you, it gives you an active for getting a bunch of hits, and it grants 30 INT points for a cheap price of 3k. For its price it adds a ton of damage for OD.
Drum of Endurance: Another good option for an early game based OD, this item is the most focused on early, since bonus movespeed and cheap stats lets you easily pressure enemy towers. This is the best item for early pushing on OD, but also the most dangerous for falling behind, since you lack any ability to survive or make up if you lose momentum with this item.
Force Staff: Force Staff with Power Treads has a lot of potential for killing people, and can be well suited for an early game based OD. The stats are not that good on OD, but that is fine since it keeps you alive.

Options:
Moon Shard: A strong item on OD, it gives him a ton of attack speed to double or triple his rate of stealing INT from enemies. In terms of damage items, this is one of the strongest to have in the early late game. Beware that it adds nothing in the way of survivability, unless you have an Octarine Core already.
Black King Bar: This item is a bit difficult to buy for OD. First he needs a ton of items in order to have enough survivability and damage output to use the BKB duration (no point in getting this item if you’re not a threat) since the stats are abnormally bad on him, second he loses his ability to use defensive astral imprisonments on himself if he gets this item. Still, against a ton of nuke damage, stuns, or silences, you will need this, especially since none of the other dispel items in the forms of Lotus, Manta, or Euls are viable on OD.
Scythe of Vyse: A situational buy on OD. I say this because OD gets strong from long fights and a disable to try to pick people off does not work against all opponents and it not really complimentary of OD’s skillset, especially against enemies with lotus orb carrying allies. Still, if your team is lacking in disables, especially for glass cannon carries like Ember Spirit, Tinker, and Anti-Mage (who is a glass cannon when dealing with you, thank you pure damage), get this item.
Shiva's Guard: A pretty good item on OD for his survival, and is his best armor item, and it boosts his ult pretty decently, but it is not that strong in terms of damage. The active is a good selling point however, since OD has trouble catching people.
Octarine Core: As a late game item, Octarine Core is still good, since you want your ult cooldown reduced and the ult being a heal will help too. Plus, either way this item boosts mana pool more than any other item at 725 which translates to 65 more Arcane Orb damage.
Hurricane Pike: A lovely item on OD, since it lets him get melee blinkers away from him, lets him reposition himself with the Force Staff active on an even smaller cooldown, the stats granted are quite nice for tanking up and dealing damage, while the bonus range on top makes it so that you can hit people without being in massive danger.
Linken's Sphere: A very situational item on OD, since the stats are less than stellar on OD, but against deadly skills like Doom or Duel, this item can be a real lifesaver, especially if the enemies have you marked as priority 1 target.
Eye of Skadi: OD scales with all 3 attributes, his survival, and he has troubles with dealing with magic immune heroes. This item helps with all of that. It adds decent damage with IAS and 550 mana pool boost, huge health pool, and gives him a slow when he attacks heroes that are magic immune. A well rounded option overall. Ignore the fact that it is UAM, this one will serve you well.
Assault Cuirass: A decent item, since it lets OD damage towers a bit. The mix of armor and attack speed is not too high in either category. The minus armor aura is not very strong given how you mostly deal pure damage, but if your team really needs one, OD can carry one decently.
Butterfly: This is the only viable evasion item for OD, and thus is his only option if he needs to manfight someone who uses Bash but not true strike yet, like many Phantom Assassins, Juggernauts or Anti-Mages tend to build. As an item that balances offense and defense, it suits him more than AC with the stats, since the Flutter active is pretty useful for catching enemies or escaping, and there is no wasted armor reduction aura.
Refresher Orb: Even with Octarine Core, Sanity’s Eclipse has a 2 minute cooldown, with this item you can have it available for 2 fights in a row (useful if the enemies buy back, since you will still have the Arcane Orb stacks from the previous fight). If the tide really needs to be turned, you may have to use 2 ults in a fight, something that is a lot more possible if you need the mana burn at the beginning of a fight (against heroes like Medusa, Tidehunter, or Enigma maybe) while still having your finishing ult. Also nice to have in your stash or on a courier in the very late game if you need to use a buyback and have to have your ultimate up.
Orchid Malevolence: A strong damage item for OD, not very good to be rushed as it is on many heroes like Queen of Pain or Clinkz because OD lacks the stats needed to blow up an Orchided target, and prefers mobility or survival items, but later in the game, this item is quite strong, especially for the active against certain heroes like Anti-Mage or Juggernaut.
Bloodthorn: A stronger Orchid that flips the bird towards miss chance heroes. This item adds a bunch of damage, and is his only viable way to deal with miss chance. For its price, it does not add too much damage to you, since you can’t crit the Arcane Orb damage, but the low cooldown lets you easily use it multiple times in a teamfight, so consider it strongly late game, it is one of OD’s best damage items.


Don't Buy These:
Mekansm / Guardian Greaves: Having high mana cost items (which cannot trigger Essence Aura) moves you farther from the sustainable 1600 threshold. There is no reason to buy this on OD.
Sange and Yasha / Monkey King Bar / Daedalus / Armlet of Mordiggian/ Radiance: These are not OD’s dps items. He has items that work much better for him like Moon Shard, Bloodthorn, and Eye of Skadi, which grant him either more stolen int from arcane orb, a counter to miss chance, and survival with damage as well.
Satanic / Mjollnir / Desolator: Arcane Orb does not stack with any of these, and none of their stats are good enough where that is okay (like with Skadi).
Blade Mail: It seems tempting to get this on a ranged INT right clicker, but this does not provide OD’s needed stats. He can’t chase anyone down or escape with this, it doesn’t help him survive (since he already has armor and needs hp for nukes), and it doesn’t significantly boost his mana pool to reach the 1600 threshold. Avoid this item, even if you’re losing.
Pipe of Insight: OD’s most needed stats in order are: mana pool, health pool, mobility and attack speed, and none of those are being provided here. Health regen seems nice, since OD has none, but ultimately, this item is ill suited for the hero. BKB is his only way to deal with magical damage.
Bloodstone: OD does not need huge mana regen, he just needs a huge mana pool so that Essence Aura can do its thing. Plus, no actual attributes, this item is awful on OD, leave it to Timber or Storm.
Heaven's Halberd: OD is not supposed to tank up, I mean he wants survival, but he also wants to boost his damage at the same time, and there are many items that do that. Halberd is not one of them. If you really need a disable, get a Hex.
Heart of Tarrasque: Go buy a Skadi instead. If you need to sustain yourself, Octarine will do you a lot of good. This is too much money for something that does not provide more than 1 stat that OD needs.
Ghost Scepter / Ethereal Blade: You need to attack in order to be dangerous, and you can’t attack if either you or your target are ethereal now can you? If you or someone you care about is being assaulted with a huge burst of physical damage, use Astral Imprisonment to protect that target, that is the purpose of the skill. Eblade might be nice on paper to combo with Sanity’s Eclipse, but that is such a light synergy that it is almost never worth buying.
Aether Lens: This item provides mana pool and health regen, so why is it rejected? Well, the boost to cast range doesn’t mean too much because OD is usually using his Orb to hit people rather than hurting people with Astral Imprisonment. Remember, even though OD is an INT hero, he is dominantly a fighter like Drow Ranger, not a caster like Tinker. Even though Astral is nice for saving people, it is not Omniknight’s spells, it is not worth investing 2000 gold and an item slot to make it better at saving people when your priority is to deal more damage or stay alive to steal more INT.
Eul's Scepter of Divinity: This one is rejected also because it is incredibly stat inefficient on OD. Mana regen means almost nothing to OD. The INT boost is weak for its cost, as Atos provides 3 times as much for only a little bit more. This makes the item only good for its active for purging silences as well as its movespeed. At this point, it is better just to spend the extra 1000 gold and get complete magic immunity for an item that provides you different useless stats in the form of BKB. Remember, fighter, not caster.
Manta Style: Ah, I really really want to be able to say you can buy this to purge silences off yourself. But you can’t. Your manta illusions are useless, as they do not carry your stolen int, nor can they use Arcane Orb. For any game that is remotely close, this item uses way too much money for stats that are not great on you (though they are not bad). Accept that you have to get the BKB.
Aghanim's Scepter: OD does not farm well. Even if you’re trying hard and you have a lot of map space, you can’t farm as easily as someone like Juggernaut can. So, every item you buy has to be useful. So, this lets you have a mass astral imprisonment when you ult, which means you can disable everyone who does not have a BKB. That sounds nice on paper… but you’re the carry. You can’t afford to spend 4200 gold just to isolate BKB carriers. This item also forces you to ult early on the fight instead of using it to finish people off like it was designed. Oh and if you’re curious, if all the enemies are close together, they don’t all get hit by each other’s Astral Imprisonment explosions, there is no Echo Slam effect.
Dagon: Repeat after me: OD is a fighter, not a caster. Sure, it might be funny to blow up someone with this item, but OD’s skillset scales with attack speed and survivability, he is not trying to explode people immediately. Rather, he wants them to be alive for a bit so he can sap all their brain cells and then explode their friends with Sanity’s Eclipse.

Item Progressions

Item Progression A: Late Game Farming Carry
(disassemble arcanes)

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This is the late game based build I use for OD, one that maximizes his farming and survival at the cost to his ability to fight and kill people early on. You seek to reach the 1600 threshold as soon as you can so that you can easily farm creeps with Orb on all the time. You can join and clean up fights, but focus on farming. This build has the best late game because it can amass a lot of gold with moving around, staying alive, and teleporting between lanes, but it comes at the cost of taking a long time to activate.

Item Progression B: Pickoff Based Midgame Carry

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This build is made for snowballing off pickoffs. The Blink Dagger lets you go for many kills with your orb, as well as escape if things don't go well, and the Scythe afterwards makes it even easier. The Moon Shard is to kill the hexed target even faster, since 3.5 seconds is still not that long for OD, a hero who lacks attack speed. This is well suited against slippery heroes like Tinker and Anti-Mage, but is comparably poor for teamfighting.

Item Progression C: Tanky Sieger Carry

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This build functions much like the carry build, except instead of focusing on farming by getting Midas Octarine, you are focusing on early pressure with Hurricane Pike, and then Shiva's Guard to be tanky and have a slow. These two items together not only make it so that you have a lot of control over combat and are hard to nuke down, but with your bonus range from the Pike combined with the armor, you are good at poking towers and faraway heroes during a push. Octarine comes next in the build to continue the tanky trend and get the Pike and Shiva's cooldowns even lower. This build can be considered rather lacking in damage however.

Item Progression D: DPS Snowballer Carry

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This build goes for damage, and comes with disabling power without focusing entirely on pickoffs. This is just to be a strong damage dealer that activates earlier, which is what Atos is so good at. This build is one that is more likely to require BKB sooner, since it grabs damage items like Orchid pretty early on. This build is good for early fighting, but because it lacks any escapes, it is also riskiest if you fall behind. Do it if you are very confident on your ability to press an early advantage.

Hero Interaction

Outworld Devourer has quite a few interactions with heroes throughout this game.

Friends from the Outer Rim : Harbinger’s Buddies

Healing Supports: These are the supports you want to come to lane with you. OD, as we have discussed, has to get kind of close to the creep wave to last hit it which means he will be harassed. As we saw in the items section, he has no real options for sustain items in the early game, whereas many heroes can go buy things like Ring of Health or Morbid Mask, OD doesn’t have the option. Because of this, OD wants to have supports that can heal him in lane to mitigate the harass he will inevitably receive. As an extention, many of these heroes are very good at saving OD from being blown up with saving spells. Bonus points if they happen to be good at zoning too.



Stunner Initiators: OD is all damage and lacking in crowd control. Heroes that can stun opponents to start a fight so that you can unleash your attacks on them are your friends.



Attack Speed Boosters: OD’s damage comes from his attack speed, and he does not inherently have very much of it, so heroes that can boost can make him extremely dangerous and activate much earlier in terms of his damage.



Beefcakes and Havoc Makers: What OD wants, what he really needs is a distraction. Someone tanky to absorb people’s attention while he accumulates stacks of Arcane Orb through attacks. If your ally can divert attention away from you for long enough, you will very quickly become too dangerous for your opponents to stop.



Spell Spammers: These heroes are nice to match with OD, since many of their mana issues are reduced when Essence Aura will restore 10% of their mana pool per spell cast. The ones that can spam right from lane, the first two heroes are especially nice since OD can greatly improve their lane control.



Tower Destroyers: You don’t need heroes that can annihilate towers in a few seconds, but the point is, when you draft OD, you need another hero on your team that will make it easy to destroy towers after you win teamfights. If you do not have such a hero, you have a much smaller margin of error than your enemies, which means they will take less won teamfights to win the game through objectives than you.



OD’s best ally. OD really does not want to spend 4k gold on Black King Bar, as he has so many items he wants to buy, but Omniknight has this ability to spoil him. OD with Repel on is an extremely dangerous hero because he can run rampant on the enemy team since almost no one can burst him down or stun him, he can disengage when repel wears off and reengage as it comes back up. Omni is also a healing support and is very good and keeping OD safe so that he can get his Arcane Orb stacks up. Omniknight compliments this guy so well.

Eclipsing: The Devourer Eats



Long Fighters: Anyone who wants a fight to go on for a while, being reliant on survival skills to “outgun” the opponents once they run out of their big spells are the type of opponents OD wants to play against. He hates stuns, silences, and burst damage, but if all they have is more survival, he will keep hitting them and getting stronger even if they do not stay down, hell, he might even kinda like it, it just makes it easier and easier to wipe the entire enemy team with Sanity’s Eclipse. By the way, OD is more dangerous than any of these heroes the longer the fight goes on.



High Armor/Magic Resistance Heroes: These guys are able to reduce huge amounts of damage; it does only a fraction of the damage it would have. However, OD can punch through all of that and rip these heroes apart. As a bonus, many of these heroes tend to be Long Fighters as well. This principle applies to most AGI heroes as well as anyone who picks up items like Shiva’s Guard or Pipe of Insight. OD does not care about any of this, he will stab right through.



These heroes have a thing in common. They are very reliant on killing people with a single target stun. Astral Imprisonment is an excellent counter to that, since it grants invulnerability. This isn’t even the whole list of heroes that you can counter with Astral too. If you have a friend that is weak to being silenced and they get silenced and then slowed, Astral them. If you have a friend that needs to be moving around and gets rooted, Astral them. Just make sure you use your Astrals properly: it is to buy time for your allies or yourself.



Terrorblade is heavily countered by Outworld Devourer. Not only is Terrorblade one of the most dependent heroes on armor, so OD’s attacks hurt him a lot, but OD can 1-2 shot his illusions because his orb does so much additional damage, which means that Terroblade has trouble pushing out lanes against OD and a lot of his damage is easily disposed of. Additionally, Terrorblade is very reliant on his Sunder in which OD can just nuke him down beforehand. Terrorblade can still cause problems if he targets you directly or severely outfarms you, but if you can take care of his illusions quickly, he will lose a lot of his power.



OD is one of the few safelane carry heroes that counters Anti-Mage. Anti-Mage is a hero that is highly dependent on not only his magic resistance to stay alive, but also in being able to lower his target’s mana so that he can blow them up with Mana Void. OD may have a slight disadvantage that he will always suffer mana break damage, but if he’s attacking AM, he will not lose mana, which means AM will not get an edge over OD. Additionally, a major part of AM’s recovery plays is to Mana Void heroes who have lost mana during pushes, but OD keeps his allies mana high, so if you start winning against AM, he cannot really come back against OD. Things can still get bad if he gets a basher or has allies chainstun you, since you can’t refill your mana without attacking, but this matchup heavily favors OD.

Clipped Winged Angel: Heroes that Counter OD



Burst Damage (especially stunners): OD is really weak to getting bursted down, he may have pretty high strength, but he’s still quick weak to getting nuked and chainstunned down. Huge burst damage prevents you from getting any Arcane Orb stacks, and unlike Slark, you don’t have proper escape skills so it is not hard to kill you. To avoid this, stay way back and try to avoid tanking the enemy’s spells, since if you’re not right clicking, you’re rather useless.



Silences: OD needs to avoid getting hit by silences. They hurt him greatly, since he cannot even use his attack without spells, and if silenced he cannot use his default response to getting gone on, which is self imprisonment. Also, Orchid carriers like Storm, Clinkz, and Qop fall into this category too. All you can do is get a BKB against these heroes and try to kill them in that BKB duration so you don’t get silenced once the BKB wears off. Silencer causes the most problems out of these heroes, since Global goes through Black King Bar, he has a low cooldown silence as well, and if he kills you he steals your INT, which will weaken your ult. Try to ask your allies to buy Lotus Orbs for you if there are too many silences.



Long Ranged Right Clickers: These heroes have the potential to be annoying because they outrange you and all of them except Clinkz (who will probably buy an Orchid) will kite you with their superior range. You can counter them in some ways, since they all are quite weak to defensive Astral Imprisonments, or even aggresive ones since all of them except Viper want to be far away from the center of battles. If they outfarm you, they can be a nightmare to deal with, since if you have a Force Staff or its upgrade, you want it to move out of combat, not into combat, and yet it may force you to use it aggressively. Hurricane Pike will serve you well, as will BKB most likely.



Mana Burn, it hurts. Late game, eating 450-700 damage mana burns every 4 seconds hurts, as does the fact that he has 2 stuns. He can gank you pretty well with all his burst damage and your INT as well. To counter, first, strongly consider repicking, otherwise, get BKB and kill him before it wears off.



PA has a skillset that deals well with OD. She runs on very low cooldown skills, so defensive Astrals are almost completely useless unless you use it on whoever it is she Abyssal Blades. You cannot kite her, so your range doesn’t help you, and she has evasion, which is rather difficult for OD to deal with, since he needs a few items before he picks up Bloodthorn. Plus, she is a burst based carry, which does not suit the “long fight” style the OD is meant to fight. On the plus side, she has low int so she is a bit weak to Sanity's Eclipse if you can get stacks of Arcane Orb from her allies.



OD struggles in general with heroes that can swarm him like PL or Lycan, but Broodmother does it to him right when he’s most vulnerable in the laning phase. Broodmother has the potential to cause OD a bunch of problems in lane because he can’t clear stacks of spiderlings even if he maxes imprisonment, since Brood can just move her spiders away. If OD gets owned in lane and Brood gets an early Orchid, the game is likely lost. Switch lanes against brood if your supports can’t keep her under control.



The best counter to OD in the game. Nether Ward will zap OD for almost 300 magic damage for every attack he performs. Additionally, Pugna can use decrep to disable OD or stop him from killing his target like he can with every other right clicker. The only option that OD has against Pugna (besides just repicking) is to get BKB, and destroy the Nether Ward before he attacks anyone, activating BKB whenever Pugna or his allies counter this move. Hurricane Pike will make it easier, since getting within 450 range to a Nether Ward is a nice way to get initiated on. To add insult to injury, with his massive INT gain, he is one of the few heroes that will be taking minimal or no damage from Sanity’s Eclipse in most games.

Conclusion

OD is a special type of hero who grows into an infestation if he's not taken care of quickly. Each strike makes him more and more capable of destroying all his enemies. No one quite likes a long fight like he does. As one who weaponizes pure damage, armor and magic resistance means nothing to him, while Magic Immunity ruins everything. Ultimately, even though he's an Intelligence hero, he manages to be a right clicking carry. He has many of their weaknesses, and is strong against many of them too. If nothing else, he is certainly a unique hero and worth a try.

If you would like to read more guides by me, check out my profile:

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Thanks to:
Tom Chandler, for bringing his full theatrics for voicing this guy.
ChiChi and Bunkansee for helping with my testing of this hero.
My friend HoneyGhost, for helping me test this hero and actually winning.