Hero Hierarchy

Introduction

Alright, this is essentially a guide for the different levels of heroes in terms of how hard they can carry into the late game.

This guide is a bit of a community guide, nothing is just my opinion it is a combined effort, I am simply the editor, nor is it currently finished I have just laid out a bit of a template of agreed concepts

If anyone would be willing to type up a hero explanation and PM it to me I would really appreciate it and of course you would be put in the Hall of Fame ;)

Whats Coming:

1. All carry encompassing Hierarchy
2. Hierarchy for different Hero rolls e.g. Utility, Support, Ganker
3. Description of why heroes are in the position they are in.
4. Adding Mid and Offlane Hierarchy

Suggestions

All Suggestions should follow these rules

1. for suggestions please write the hero name, what category, and what Tier you think.
2. please be polite and constructive when making comments or suggestions and please reserve the comments section for suggestions or errors only.
3. If providing a suggestion to put in a new hero into a category or moving a hero up or down please provide and explanation for your reasoning
4. Please refrain from going off topic on the comments, there is a forum section for that

Follow all these guidelines and you shouldn't get to much abuse unless you say stupid ****

Suggestion Template:
Hero:
Category:
Tier:
Explanation:

Hierarchy Explanation

This is getting really damn big. Ok to the point, all of this works like the ancient hierarchy of Japan. There was a feif lord, a warlord and then his samurai the farmers then traders. Only this is for dota heroes, the way it applies to dota is what hero best fits its roll, for example for the carry role Medusa would be the feif lord, and someone like Lina would be a farmer.

Due to situational factors there is no set order and as such their are tiers, tiers are set rows in a structure the top tier being the best and the bottom being the worst, however I will not be bothering to include stupid stuff in the hierarchy like a Wisp( Io, I hate that name) carry

Criteria

Support: Lockdown Support oriented skills Lack of Item Dependancy Mid Ganking Potential(see ganking criteria) Presence Lockdown (stuns, slows, other e.g astral imprisoment) Laning Presence Solo Offlane Survivability Ability to get last hits under heavy harass Lack of item dependency Jungle Early Game burst damage Ability to use minions to jungle A built in farming ability like Devour ability to stay in for a prolonged time via tankyness, lifesteal or a heal

Carry: Farm Potential-Abilities/Items e.g Hand of Midas Devour Potential Damage Ability's Semi-Carry Damage Potential Tanking Potential Farm Speed Laning Presence Ganker: Presence Abilities Online time Burst Potential Utility: Online time Role range Evasive Potential Lockdown

Carry Hierarchy

As this is a community guide all of this is mainly a template as all content comes form community members

Ganker Hierarchy

Utility Hierarchy

To come, btw utility heroes are heroes that don't really fit into any category like Beastmaster, they are heroes that would fit into a 3 roll in the absence of a ganker

Support Hierarchy

Mid Hierachy

Solo Offlane Hierarchy

Jungle Hierarchy

Pushing Hierarchy

Anti-Pushing Heirarchy

Explanation

Faceless Void

he is an incredibly hard carry because of his ultimate Chronosphere which is effectively a 5 second aoe stun, this allows him to finish off dangerous opponents with very low risk. Another reason is backtrack which allows him to dodge abilities like Finger of Death. Finally his other passive timelock which allows a late game Faceless Void to almost stun lock an enemy hero
Criteria:

• Potential Farm speed Faceless Void alone doesn't have that much farming potetnial, however with a Hand of Midas he can very quickly get some big items. However as many facless void players quickly rush either a battlefury or a maelstorm, a battlefury improves your farming time and enables you to stay in the jungle indefinitely with the passive regen.
  The most popular build currently is mask of maddness into Maelstrom allowing void to kill almost any single target in a chrono.
• Potential Damage: as with any carry with some items Faceless Void can do a huge amount of damage with the right items, however with timelock to hold enemies in place, his first ability to slow and his ultimate Chronosphere he has the time and potential to deal a huge amount of damage. Some of the items to improve damage for Faceless Void are battlefury, aswell as giving bonus damage this when doing cool stuff like 5 man Chronosphere's you the cleave across all 5 of them giving you the potential for a rampage, Maelstrom does the same thing. Daedalus is pretty basic, more damage and crits nuff said. Assault Cuirass makes you a bit tankier and gives all the enemies around you lowered armour allowing for even MOAR damage. Finally in terms of popular items is Butterfly which makes you almost impossible to hit(fountain dive time) btw: hint hint if you jump into the enemy fountain and Chronosphere over the fountain then it can't fire. Another item quite a few players tend to get is Mask of Madness which does give you burst damage and lets you farm quickly makes your squishy issue worse.
  
• Abilities: as explained above he has a lot of lock-down potential and also escape potential with timewalk, backtrack is also an incredible skill allowing you to dodge not just right click attacks but spells. In addition to that Monkey King Bar does not allow the carrier to reliably hit Faceless Void.

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I made a separator, yay

Medusa

Because of the way she works Medusa takes an incredible amount of farm to really come online, however once she does she can easily 1v5 and come out on top, late game she is bot incredibly tanky and deals a massive amount of damage and with her ultimate Stone Gaze she gets the time to do that damage in safety.

• Potential Farm Speed: Medusa has the ability to farm incredibly quickly with Split Shot and she can do it in relative safety in lane as due to mana sheild she is very tanky and hard to take down. In addition to this once she gets Manta Style she can easily do 1-2 camps with every illusion while the main one does the (hopefully) stacked ancient camp.
• Potential Damage: Passively Medusa is fairly average, not great stat gains no fantastic damage with Split Shot she does a decent amount of damage but not to a single target, its the items that make medusa really huge, medusa item choices need to give her tanky-ness as well as damage, for this reason some of the most popular items are: Eye of Skadi Manta Style linkens sphere Assault Cuirass and some players get Bloodstone, personally I think that's stupid. The main reason medusa gets scary late game though is Divine Rapier's, because she is so hard to kill and she has Split Shot Medusa is the ideal rapier carrier, with a rapier everyone will simply die as long as you keep auto-attacking and making good use of Stone Gaze.
• Her abilities I have basically already explained with the exception of mystical snake, this ability can be used for finishing off heroes early game, late game it doesn't do much damage but if there are a lot of entities with intelligence she can replenish majority of her mana pool with it, potentially saving her life if she doesn't have enough mana for mana sheild

Nyx Assassin

As with any tier one carry they should have abilities that allow them to get close to their target before being noticed. Nyx has this in his ultimate: Vendetta, he goes invisible gains bonus move speed and if he breaks invis to attack before the duration is up he deals massive bonus damage to the target, up to 550 bonus damge at lvl 16. Now this alone will be scary but factor in his other ability, Impale a max lvl 2.25 second stun with 260 damage. Again a nice ability, but his last two abilities are where he becomes a tier one ganker. Mana Burn destroys the target heroes mana at a max lvl multiplier of 5x their intelligence and then deals damage equal to the mana burned. 100 intelligence on the hero will deal 500 damage and burn 500 mana as well, basically making the target without mana and low hp. Now combine the three and you have over 1310 damage in 2.6 seconds.
Be afraid.
But what is all that worth if you just get killed by their lane partner after?. This is where Nyxs 4th ability comes in spiked carapace when activated completely reflects any damage dealt to Nyx back upon the dealer, in addition the dealer will be stunned for at max lvl 2.4 seconds allowing Nyx to scuttle away to safety with his kill. Now these abilities alone make him a tier one ganker. If we look at his core items he becomes even scarier.

Dagon. For 2730 gold he can dish out an additional 400 damage. Lvl 5 dagon for an extra 5000 gold he will be dealing 800 bonus damage. With abilities factoring in a hero with 50 intelligence he will deal a total of 1860 damage before reductions ¦ in 3.3 seconds.

Ethereal Blade. If Nyx gets this ¦GG well played.

Nyx can come online from lvl 6 usually around the 5-10 min mark and in certain drafts he can gank from lvl 4, making him have one of the quickest online times for gankers in Dota.
His ability to go from one lane to another quickly and invisibly, deal massive damage and get away make his presence upon the DOTA battlefield one to be feared and admired.
Usually all you will hear as their dying breath escapes your hero will be¦.

Invoker

Invoker, the omnipotent magus, the unparalled sorcerer, the giant ****head with an ego of the size of a multiverse. You love him, you hate him, but you can't simply ignore him. Always a top tier pick in competitve as well as hold 5th highest popularity in pub, Invoker is one of the most versatile hero in the game.
Invoker has 10 abilties:

[

• [Cold Snap]]: a debuff that mini-stun upon taking damage.
• Ghost Walk: a wind walk that speed Invoker up and slow down enemies.
• Tornado: a long ranged AOe cyclone.
• EMP: an AOE mana burn.
• Ice Wall: an AOE slow.
• Forge Spirit: 2 ****buddies...oops, i mean 2 OP summons that can strip armor.
• Sun Strike: global pure damage nuke.
• Chaos Meteor: AOE Damage over time nuke.
• Alacrity: damage and attack speed buff.
• Deafening Blast: AOE stun that also knock back that also disarm that also deal damage.

Problems with Invoker

• He is innately squishy, and have no option to level stats.
• He is innately slow (280 base MS).
• His spells don't scale.
• He requires a lot of farm and experience, and have no come back mechanics. An underlevelled Invoker is a big hinder for his team.

Carry hierarchy
Damage potential: his nukes, although deal lots of damage, doesn't scale, is unreliable (need setup stuns), and don't go through BKB(with the exception of sunstrike. His right-click damage is decent, with Exort and Alacrity.
Farming speed: Invoker actually can rice very fast with double Forge Spirit. Furthermore, he can stack camps and use Chaos Meteor to clear them for massive income. His strong laning ability makes it easy for him to getting a quick Hand of Midas and ramp up his farm.
Abilitys: only Forge Spirit and Alacrity improve his physical damage, while the rest are nukes or disables, none of which goes through BKB, hence his skillset is not carry-oriented.


Ganker hierarchy

Invoker is placed 2nd in the ganker list.

Presence: Sun Strike gives him global presence. A 450 pure damage nuke in the mid game is not joke. Ghost Walk is another great ability for ganking purposes when combined with an Orchid Malevolence.
Abilities: most of Invoker spells that deals major damage require set up, while his disables require a bit of coordination and timing. He has no insta-disable abilties, which must be amended through items. His best abilities for ganking are Cold Snap, Ghost Walk, Tornado and Ice Wall.
Online time: Ideally Invoker will have one major item before actively ganking. For Exort build, he needs a Eul's Scepter of Divinity. and for the QW build he'll need an Orchid Malevolence or for both build he can get a force staff/blink. Before then he can just sunstrike.
Burst potential: the combo SS-Meteor-Blast will instagib most heroes save for the tankiest, while the Ghost Walk+Orchid+ EMP+ Cold Snap can usually kill squishy heroes that rely on escape.


Utility hierarchy

Invoker is placed 2nd on the utility list.

Online time: Invoker requires a lot of levels to be effective. I would say at he will be starting to contribute at level 9 onward.
Role range: as one of the most versatile hero, Invoker can fit any role, given that he gets the EXP required.
Evasive potential: when going the Qw build, Invoker has great MS and Ghost Walk, quick make him very mobile. If you're going for the QE build, then his mobiloty is quite low. However with the popular force staff/blink it should be fine.
Lockdown: Cold Snap is very good, and i mean VERY good. Its cast range is simply ridiculous, and the constant ministun makes sure that your target can neither run nor fight back. Deafening Blast is also very strong: a potential 4 seconds disable against right-clickers ain't no jokes. Tornado is simply his best spell, with amazing utility and it removes all positive and negative buffs, invis bounty hunter? nope Ice Wall is the best slow in the game (provided that you can land it of course).


Mid hierarchy

Invoker is the top tier in the mid list.

Ganking potential: he won't be ganking before getting a major item.
Presence: global with Sun Strike.
Lock down: Cold Snap is your best friend here.
Laning presence: 600 range, ridiculous bonus damage to last hit with Exort, Forge Spirit and Alacrity.


Push hierarchy

Invoker is placed 3rd in the push list.
Forge Spirit and Alacrity deal a lot of tower damage. Necronomicon is usually one of his core item, making his pushing power even higher.

This invoker Explanation was written by MuoiKhoang

Conclusion

I hope to see many contributions to this guide as I think it could really help people playing captains mode or trying to captain a new team.

Hall Of Fame

I decided contributors was boring, THIS IS THE HALL OF FAME NOW DAMMIT
I made cool names and stuff so you can feel proud
italics for a small contribution-Contributors
normal for a decent contribution-Two Time contributor
bold for a big contribution-Grand Contributor
underlined and bold for massive contributors-The Grannddd Magussss
The Smugguls Rank-Because he practically wrote 1/2 this guide
My Rank I did write this guide

• FleetAU (itsa me)
• Mastadoom
• Smuggels
• Zerak Kyria
• Xyrus :{)
• Krwiozerca
• KoDyAbAbA
• Yasutsuna
• Ninecent
• Eightfold
• eatmyoreo
• Hamstertamer
• The-Only-Chris
• Unscathed
• MuoiKhoang

Change Log

This was getting big due to frequent editing