How to be a dirty Brood abuser - a tactical guide

Introduction

Broodmother is one of the most ridiculous heroes in DotA, and also one of my favorite and most fun to play. She's completely unique in the way she plays, and she can do things that no other hero can.

The most noticeable part being her ability to completely infest the enemy safe lane and especially the enemy jungle with a network of webs, and just sit there the whole game waiting for food to show up.

She's infamous for her absurd laning presence, because where other heroes have some annoying harassing skills or something, Brood has a freaking army of 30+ spiders that lets her kill anything that comes near, and let's face it that's absolutely awesome and fun as hell to play.

I decided to make this guide on Brood when I noticed how terrible pub players are at this hero, and her being stuck at a 40%-like winrate simply because of pub players sucking *hard* at playing her. While in the hands of someone who know what he's doing, Brood can literally win the game on her own almost 1 vs 5, and own so hard that he gets reported by the entire enemy team for abusing a broken hero!

I also made this guide because I felt that a Brood guide needs to be way more than an item build and skill build. There are some good Brood guides out there with correct skill and item builds, but the big challenge of playing Brood isn't how to build her, it's about decision making. This hero is all about map control, map awareness, and in general working alone *but* in communication with your team. So I'll try to put emphasis on strategy/coordination with your team because I think it's a must if you want to get the most out of the hero.

I also put some emphasis on matchups against other heroes, and on how to deal with problematic matchups, both in lane and later in the game.

Have a nice read!

Pros / cons

Pros:

+ Insane snowballing potential. Complete pubstomper if played correctly, even at very high skill levels.
+ No, seriously, can single-handedly win a dota game 1 vs 5, end up with more than 20 kills at 20 minutes, and take down the enemy base on her own 20 mins into the game.
+ Can steamroll most pub offlanes and easily win 1 v 2 or even 1 v 3 lane matchups while getting free kills on the enemy safe lane carry.
+ One of the best early pushers in the game. Can take down the enemy T1 and T2 towers in less than 10 minutes, often before the enemy team can even react.
+ Very fast farmer with spiderlings.
+ Can solo kill almost any hero, even later in the game.
+ High skill cap : micromanagement, map awareness, advanced r[A]t dota, etc.
+ Lots of fun to play, playing Brood never gets old!


Cons:

- Completely dependent on snowballing off the early game. Useless hero if you don't dominate your laning stage. Terrible comeback hero.
- If played offlane, gets shut down by heavy AOE lanes (luckily very few heroes have enough AOE in the early game)
- Escape ability is pretty weak. Can easily get picked off if played carelessly.
- Completely dependent on webs to be effective. Mobility restricted to a (very) small portion of the map.
- Mainly an early game hero. Falls off pretty hard after 20 minutes (no I'm not kidding).
- Very item dependent if you want to stay relevant later in the game as a (semi) carry.
- Hard countered by some specific heroes (luckily pubs have no clue what the real Brood counters are and most "counters" are actually very easy to outplay).
- Pretty squishy in the early game. Easy first blood target if careless.
- Needs good coordination with the rest of the team to coordinate split push and taking objectives. Good luck with that in pubs.
- Playing Brood often makes you salty as hell because most games you're playing completely 1 vs 5 dota with useless AFK teams.

So, what does this hero do?

Broodmother is a hero that you pick for one thing and one thing only : to snowball HARD off the early game by getting a huge number of kills in the laning stage, and then to turn this advantage into a massive early push.

Brood is one of the strongest early game heroes in DotA, maybe even the strongest. Although she might appear to be a carry because of her being an agility hero with right-click oriented skills, Brood is at her strongest in the first 20 minutes of the game, and playing a successful Brood game is all about ending the game before 25 minutes after getting an insane number of early kills.

Brood is an early game hero for the same reason why Chen or Undying are early game heroes : any hero who relies on summmoned/controlled units has no scaling whatsoever. Summoned units hit extremely hard in the early game but they hardly do anything later in the game where their damage has become negligible and they get killed in 2 hits by the enemy carry.

This doesn't mean that Brood is necessarily bad in the late game. She's a perfectly legit semi-carry, and I've had my fair share of times where I managed to solo carry 1 hour long games with a farmed Brood while my safe lane carry and mid were essentially feeding. However this means that it's extremely important to make big plays in the first 20 minutes of the game and dominate your lane for Brood to have any kind of impact.

Broodmother is almost exclusively played as a solo offlane. The reason why you go offlane with this hero is because of her insane laning presence. She can win the lane pretty easily even against a trilane, and shut down HARD the enemy carry. Unlike most offlaners who go to the offlane just to sap experience and get a bit of farm, Brood goes offlane to get kills (and a lot of them), as well as push the towers.

It is also possible to play Brood as a solo mid. However she's still better played offlane than mid, for the reason that she doesn't "need" the mid lane to be effective : since she can kill everything in her lane even when laning against a trilane, there's no point in playing her in a "risk-free" 1 v 1 matchup in mid lane. Creating space for your team as an offlaner is always better than taking space from your team as a mid. However it can still be a great idea situationally to play Brood mid, but I'd only really recommend this if you want to completely shut down some specific solo mids like Viper, Templar Assassin or Sniper (who are absolute free kills for a level 3 Brood!).

Brood is a hero who aims to split up the enemy team, and to pick them off one by one.

The picking phase

So, you just started a game and want to pick Brood? Here's a few tips for the picking phase.

Solo offlane or feed

As Broodmother you want to solo the offlane (Radiant top, Dire bottom). I insist that you need to SOLO your lane. Do not dual lane with Brood, ever. Sure, some lane combos with Dazzle, or Undying may sound like good ideas on paper, but trust me, they're really not. Brood doesn't need a support to win her lane, so your Dazzle instead should be supporting your safe lane where he belongs. Only thing that will happen from having a lane partner is that you'll have someone sapping your XP and maybe even taking your farm, while accomplishing literally nothing since Brood can win the lane on her own already. Brood is a very level-dependent hero so you can't let anyone take your precious XP.

Besides it's extremely important that your supports are actually helping the two other lanes instead of sitting idly in your lane, because Brood is all about snowballing off an early game advantage, and winning your lanes is an absolute must for doing that.

At the beginning of the game, make it very clear to your team that you want to solo your lane. Tell your team that they can pick a jungler, or a trilane for the safe lane.

It's actually a really good thing for your team that you want to solo your lane, because it makes a lot of space for your safe lane and allows you to have a jungler. It even allows your team to pick a greedy jungling core like Ursa, Troll Warlord, Lycan or Lone Druid, something that's generally not recommended because these guys as junglers are kind of AFK farmers and don't bring anything to the early game, but since you have a Brood to make spece for them, it's perfectly fine, and they can freefarm jungle for 15 minutes easily and then come join the push once they have their items.


Avoid unfair counterpicks

One of the biggest problems with Broodmother is that she can be counterpicked pretty hard. Luckily she can deal with a lot of counters and there are actually not that many heroes who can completely shut her down.
However I still recommend picking Brood towards last just pick to avoid having to deal with specific heroes she has big problems against.
Do not pick Broodmother if the enemy team has one of the following heroes :

- Tinker
- Storm Spirit
- Legion Commander
- Meepo
- Io (only if he's a good player)

There are a bunch of other annoying heroes to deal with as Brood but these are definitely the "no-no" heroes. Personally I'd be perfectly fine with picking Brood against essentially any other hero than these ones. There are other Brood counters but you can outplay them and beat them with some experience, however these guys are an absolute pain in the butt no matter how well you're playing and against them it's better to just avoid Brood altogether and pick another offlaner instead.


Suggested friends

The best friends of Broodmother are all other pushers, especially early pushers.

It's extremely important when playing Brood that the rest of your team has enough pushing power to get early towers and siege the enemy base, since you need your team to be able to punish the enemy team by taking towers if they are grouping up in your lane.

Don't hesitate to suggest a few picks to your team that go well with Brood :

Safe lane carries : Troll Warlord, Meepo, Luna, Gyrocopter, Drow Ranger, Juggernaut, Tiny, Lycan
Solo mids : Warlock, Leshrac, Windranger, Troll Warlord, Pugna, Invoker, Lone Druid, Sniper, Viper, Razor, Dragon Knight, Venomancer
Supports : Shadow Shaman, Warlock, Jakiro, Leshrac, Venomancer
Junglers : Axe, Chen, Enigma, Nature's Prophet, Lycan, even Troll Warlord and Lone Druid

Heroes who can take Roshan early like Ursa or Slardar are also good friends, since an early Rosh will help you push a lot.

Skills and skill builds

- This skill is what makes Broodmother such a strong early game hero. Being able to spawn an army of spiderlings as soon as she hits level 3 gives her absolutely insane killing potential in lane. Therefore you should always max this skill first.

- Spiderlings move at very high movement speed in your webs and slow enemy heroes they hit by 15%. They are extremely good chasers and your spiderling army can kill heroes on its own.

- Spiderlings can and should be used for :

• killing heroes and tower diving (the most important)
• pushing towers
• farming jungle camps when you're not using them for anything else

- Don't forget that spiderlings provide good vision as well. You can take one spiderling from the pack and move it around to use it as a free ward.

- Always last hit creeps with your spiderling army to take advantage of Spawn Spiderite.






- Brood is extremely strong in her webs, and almost useless outside of them. Keep in mind that the main benefit of the webs is the increased movement speed for you and your spiderlings, as well as the free pathing through trees for you and your minions. Both buffs makes Brood a completely unfair chaser who can close in on any hero. The invisibility is juts the icing on the cake.

- Only real question is where to actually put the webs. So,

• During laning, always have a web at the creep equilibrium, so you can sit there to get last hits and denies
• When you start going aggressive, start putting webs forward to chase enemy heroes. Ultimately you should put webs over enemy towers so you can tower dive freely. Also put webs in the trees *behind* the towers so you can chase down heroes trying to juke.
• Webs are not only for the lane. It's very important to use webs to control the enemy jungle as well. Put webs on jungle camps in order to kill any enemy hero trying to farm the jungle, as well as to farm the camps yourself.
• When sieging the enemy base, it's very important to put webs *inside* the enemy base, not just in front of the T3 towers. This way you can actually dive the base and kill defending heroes.
• When sieging, also try to make a path of webs from the offlane to the mid lane, so you can rotate between the two lanes.

- Spin Web has 4 charges. This means you can place webs in front of you when chasing an enemy hero for the movement speed. Or alternatively you can rotate to another lane and instantly place 4 webs there. Take advantage of the web charges, they're awesome.






- Gives a slow and a miss chance to any enemy you hit. This skill makes you an extremely strong chaser when combined with the movement speed bonus from Spin Web AND the 15% slow from Spiderling Poison Sting

- The 60% miss chance makes you an extremely strong manfighter against single heroes, since they can't attack back.

- This skill is no longer a unique attack modifier, so it stacks with other unique attack modifiers!

- The miss chance is countered by Monkey King Bar and Black King Bar.

- The 60% miss chance works on Roshan! Combined with Insatiable Hunger, Brood is a really good hero for taking Roshan early.





- Pretty straightforward skill. This love child of a Satanic and a Divine Rapier makes you hit hard and gives you insane lifesteal, which is of course very valuable. This skill especially shines in small encounters and manfights, since it allows youu to 1 v 2 or 1 v 3 most heroes thanks to the lifesteal. It's not as effective in large teamfights however, but it's still useful.

- When low HP, use it on jungle creeps or lane creeps for sustain. It gets you back to full HP in a few seconds.

- Don't hesitate to use it for pushing towers as well. 100 damage is a big deal when attacking a tower, and the cooldown is really low.

- Only downside of this skill is that it can be purged. So watch out for Diffusal Blades and Eul's Scepter of Divinity in the enemy team.

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Skill build


Broodmother's skill build is more or less set in stone. Always max Spawn Spiderlings first because it's your best early game skill, you never have enough spiders.

Spin Web is always maxed second, because it increases the number of webs. You need to be able to put down 4 to 6 webs ASAP, because you need the map contrtol badly. You need to expand your area of control to the enemmy T1 tower and to the enemy jungle as soon as you can.

The 4th skill point on Spin Web which gives 8 webs isn't that necessary so you can delay it to skill Incapacitating Bite or Insatiable Hunger instead.

Having one early level in incapacitting bite can be useful for the slow, so I skill it at level 8.

Insatiable Hunger only starts becoming useful when you want to commit Brood herself to fights, and generally you don't need it in the early game since you rely mainly on your spiderlings, so you can wait until level 9 to skill it.

There are some debates over whether you could play a "spider-less" Brood without skilling Spawn Spiderlings (!), but it's very clear that such a build cannot work in the offlane. In the offlane, the only way Brood can stand up to 2 or 3 heroes is having an army of spiders, otherwise she just gets overpowered easily. So if you want to play a spider-less Brood, play her solo mid, max Spin Web and Incapacitating Bite and skill your ultimate at 6, but don't forget that with a build like this you can only take a 1 vs 1 matchup.

Items

There are two thing you want to focus on in Broodmother's item build:

• In the first 20 minutes of the game, you want to build ites that help her snowball HARD and pick up a ton of kills, and
• After 20 minutes, you want to play Brood as a (semi)-carry with damage items and a BKB

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Starting items




Cost : 400 gold

Soul Ring stands for the 125 gold recipe. Don't buy the components, only the recipe ; later you'll get the components from the secret shop.
I'm not spending all the starting gold on purpose. The whole point of the item build is to get the Soul Ring ASAP. You can't waste gold on early game items, you need the item as soon as you can.
Tango to tank the harass. No point in getting a Salve since you regen from webs.
Three branches to build into Magic Wand later and survive first blood attempts at level 1.
Add an Observer Ward given to you by a support.


Early game

Absolute core item on Brood. I can't insist enough how important it is to get an EARLY Soul Ring on her. Always buy this as a first item, before boots, before anything else. Soul Ring allows you to spam Spawn Spiderlings in lane and build up your spider army. The sooner you reach level 3 with your soul ring, the sooner you can go for early kills and probably get first blood.

Enemies will probably start putting senbtry wards in your lane to try to shut you down. That's pretty easy to deal with : buy your own sentries, destroy enemy sentries with your spiderlings, and kill the enemy supports for good measure if they try to contest you. Easy game easy life :)

I always go for Magic Wand on Brood, because it's maybe the best early game item in Dota for heroes who expect to join fights. Since you're soloing against a dual lane or trilane (and you can expect way more people to come to your lane), expect to see a TON of spells flying in your direction, or trying to clear your spiderlings. This means you'll get a billion wand charges. The HP heal will often save your life when you get focused, and the mana heal will help you a lot to get that Spawn Spiderlings to secure a kill.

Orb of Venom slows people in lane while your spiderlings are right-clicking them. This item can get you a lot of kills in lane you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Even allows you to get kills outside of your webs if you keep applying the slow.

Some people go for an early Ring of Basilius on Brood instead of the wand, so I'm putting it for notice even though I never buy it. Basilius gives you some decent mana regen, and the armor aura benefits all your spiderlings and the lane creeps which helps you push faster.

Always go Power Treads on Brood. She needs the HP, and she has no use for the movement speed of Phase Boots since she already has her webs.

Situational early-game item to help you get more kills. Amplifies the damage done by your spiderlings as well as yourself, and melts those tanky heroes in seconds. Actually amplifies your spiderling damage more than Orchid Malevolence, however orchid gives you a counter to AOE skills and escapes which Medallion doesn't. Only buy this item if you're not going orchid.

Since Brood essentially only needs a Soul Ring to dominate the early game...going for a Hand of Midas makes sense just after your Soul Ring. If you want to go Midas, the item progression is Soul Ring -> Hand of Midas -> Boots of Speed -> whatever. Always get midas after SR and before boots. Midas allows you to get more farm for the late game *without weakening your early game*, which is why Midas on Brood is generally pretty popular. You should still spend the early game hunting heroes and not farming. Only get Midas if you don't need an early Orchid Malevolence, or if you don't need orchid at all. Solid item if you think that you can't end the game before 20 minutes, and the game is going late.

Almost-core items

Orchid Malevolence is almost core on Broodmother. When in doubt, always get one. Why orchid? Because it gives Brood exactly what she needs to dominate the early game. Essentially orchid allows you to kill any hero : Orchid allows you to silence heroes with AOE skills, this way you can kill them easily in 5 seconds with your spider army while they can't fight back. Orchid allows you to disable heroes with escape skills, while slowing them with Incapacitating Bite, making them completely unable to get away Orchid allows you to silence stunners and disablers, preventing the enemy supports to stop you from snowballing and turning them into spiderling food. You need your orchid as soon as possible. You need an EARLY orchid, because this item allows you to kill essentially any hero at this stage of the game. Typically aim for 12-13 minute orchid. Brood is such a ridiculous hero, some people get 7 minute orchid. Orchid is not the best late game item, especially on Brood. So if you can't get it at a decent timing (16-18 minute maximum), don't buy this item. The only point of it is to kill lots of heroes before 25 minutes with your spiderlings, while giving you enough mana regen to spam spiderlings on cooldown. Also don't forget that orchid has hard counters like Eul's Scepter of Divinity or Manta Style, so sadly this item is pretty useless against heroes who like rushing Euls like Lina or Invoker.

Black King Bar is necessary in almost every game on Broodmother. It allows you to manfight groups of enemies without getting disabled and blown up. Great synergy with Insatiable Hunger, which sustains your health while you right-click freely and out-damage everyone. Typically get BKB just after your Orchid Malevolence. Also a good item for rat dota plays in general. Pop BKB and right-click freely the enemy T3 tower or barracks. They have no way to stop you during your BKB duration.

Necrobook




Buy Necronomicon if you need more pushing power to end the game early. A great pick if you plan on breaking the enemy base in the next 5-10 minutes.
Also a great pick for the true sight. It allows you to see and destroy Sentry Wards in your lane.
Don't hesitate to buy one if you're facing a lot of invisible heroes also.


Wards




Brood needs to control the enemy jungle, and needs to have vision to prevent getting picked off. Aggressive wards in the enemy jungle or even in the enemy base are a must.
Ask your supports to buy wards and place them yourself. In the worst case buy your own wards.


Standard right-click/carry items





- Manta Style : Awesome item on Broodmother, almost-core in your late game build.
The active ability dispels Dust of Appearance and allows you to dodge stuns. Manta gives an almost-reliable escape to Brood.
Gives nice movement speed for chasing, and the illusions are a huge boost to your damage output in manfights.
Manta is an *ultra-spammable* item, with almost no cooldown, which allows you to spam illusions and send them to attack the enemy buildings without any risk to yourself.
Pretty much the giant version of Spawn Spiderlings, so use it as such :)

- Monkey King Bar : Solid damage item. Buy this if you're facing evasion. Also breaks Town Portal Scrolls with the mini-bash, preventing the only escape that enemy heroes still have.

- Skull Basher : Good manfight and disabling item. The cheapest item you can get to break Town Portal Scrolls.

- Assault Cuirass : Generally you don't build AC on agility heroes but this item has a great synergy with Brood. Brood has pretty low armor making it a nice pickup, plus all your spiderlings, lane creeps and Necronomicon units benefit from the aura giving you a big increase to your pushing power.

- Daedalus : highest damage output item in the game.

- Abyssal Blade : Great manfight item for the late game, also good disable against heroes with escapes.

- Mjollnir : Good farming/pushing item, solid choice especially if you get it early. Instantly clears creep waves. The lightning shield is awesome on Brood who tends to get focused a lot.

- Butterfly : slightly questionable item since evasion stacking is generally pretty bad. Incapacitating Bite already gives a miss chance and can make enemy heroes go for Monkey King Bars. If you're facing a lot of right-clickers without MKB's, why not.

- Eye of Skadi : Now that Brood can use orb effects, skadi is better than Heart of Tarrasque in every way.


Situational items





- Vladmir's Offering : You see a lot of guides recommending Vlads on Brood, some even put in in core items! However, you will essentially never see a single Brood going Vlads in high level games or in competitive dota.
Yes, I know, spiderlings get 15% bonus damage and 5 armor from the aura (the lifesteal on spiderlings does nothing so forget it). So why no Vlads Brood? Simply because rushing Orchid Malevolence is better, or going Hand of Midas if you don't need a specific item. It's not a bad item on Brood by any means, but you're just delaying your orchid.
Vlads doesn't really help you kill heroes, it's useless against AOE damage, it helps you push a bit but you can already take down towers without it, and Brood doesn't need lifesteal. It's essentially too much of a low impact item to have its place in the build.
Vlads is at the core a teamfight item for 5-man dota, so if you just intend to sit in the offlane all game long and split push, don't go Vlads.
Why do I still put it in situational? Because it's a great item if you want to play Brood mid, if you intend to join teamfights with Brood and push with your team.

- Blink Dagger : Extremely situational item, but can be devastating in the right scenarios.
Mainly an item for tower diving, especially to dive the enemy base. Essentially a f*** you Tinker/ Keeper of the Light/ Sniper/ Techies/any hero who sits behind his tower to counterpush item.
With a blink you can instantly tower dive anyone who tries to clear your creep wave to stop your push. Great synergy with Abyssal Blade or Scythe of Vyse. If the enemy team thinks they can get away with putting a solo hero like Kotl or Tinker to defend against you, but a blink, and make him regret it.
Also a good item for split pushing in general, because it allows you to escape ganks.

- Linken's Sphere : Great item on split pushers in general because it allows you to avoid getting picked off, so a solid choice on Brood. Can replace Black King Bar in some games. Buy this against Legion Commander, Spirit Breaker and the like.
The fact that it gives mana regen makes it a good option for your first item instead of orchid, in the right games of course.

- Pipe of Insight : can replace Black King Bar in some games against heavy AOE magic damage but few disables. Nice thing about pipe is that your spiderlings, your lane creeps and your Necro units benefit from the active, so great item against counterpushers like Keeper of the Light or Tinker.

- Armlet of Mordiggian : some people like armlet so much that they build it on agility heroes. If you're one of these die-hard armlet fans, Brood is one of the best AGI heroes for this item thanks to her insane lifesteal.

- Scythe of Vyse : Only buy this item if you're getting desperate against heroes Brood really can't deal with. Mainly a f*** you Storm Spirit/ Tinker/ Ember Spirit/ Keeper of the Light/ Techies item.

- Diffusal Blade : Gives you long-range initiation with the slow. Dispels Ghost Scepter and counters heroes like Omniknight, Warlock or Ursa.

- Dust of Appearance : so you can solo kill invisible heroes.

- Boots of Travel : Replace your treads with travels at some point, you need to be able to get to lanes quickly to push them out.


Radiance?




Rushing Radiance on Broodmother is kind of a niche build, but it can work if you get a very fast radiance.
The way Brood works, she can get a radiance at 15-16 minutes fairly easily. Some ridiculous games you can get one at 10 minutes!
So why go radiance on Brood? Pretty much because you can. 50 damage per second is nothing to laugh at, especially this early in the game. It makes Brood better at fighting large groups of heroes and at joining teamfights.
Besides, it's also a farming item, and it helps you push lanes faster.
Best to get a Manta Style just after it, this way you can spam illusions with the radiance burn, for flashfarming, and pushing out the lane to threaten the enemy T3 tower with illusions.
The radiance build is also pretty good against teams who are 5-manning your lane, since Manta also allows you to spam illusions with radiance burn to harass.
Obviously get it as a first item and skip orchid, or don't get it at all.


Rejected items




Stout Shield and Poor Man's Shield might sound like great choices as starting items on a Brood offlane. However, the only thing that damage block does on Brood is block harassment while you're trying to farm your Soul Ring.
However after you have your Soul Ring you don't care about harassment anymore because you should be overwhelming your lane with spiderlings and threatening to kill enemy heroes. At that point there's no reason to commit your main hero to fights anymore since the spiderlings do all the work, so the damage block is useless.
By buying a stout or PMS the only thing you're doing is delaying your Soul Ring by 250/500 gold, which makes you very vulnerable to feeding first blood while you're trying to get last hits as a melee hero to farm it in the first place.
These items really slow down your early game for no reason. So don't, save your gold for SR instead, since Brood is all about "get to level 3 with a Soul Ring and go kill stuff".
Quelling Blade...same thing, you're just delaying your SR by 225 gold, save your gold instead.


dagon

Aah, dagon and Ethereal Blade...the typical pub scrub nuking/killsteal build.
Why is Dagon/Eblade Brood terrible? Well, for the same reason why Dagon/Eblade Bounty Hunter or Riki is terrible.
Still not seeing why?
Well, Dagon/Eblade is a build for heroes who are already nukers. That's why for example Nyx Assassin or Necrophos can use a Dagon/Eblade build, *because they have nukes to follow-up on it*. Dagon/EBlade only add damage to the burst that Nyx and Necro already have, and amplify it. However, Brood is not a nuker. Brood is a right-click hero, as her skills Incapacitating Bite and Insatiable Hunger clearly show.
Never, ever buy dagon on a right-click hero unless you're a troll.
Eblade + Dagon 5 deals approximately the equivalent of 1050 pure damage (depends a bit on your stats but not that much). When you add Spawn Spiderlings, you have approximately 1365 pure damage equivalent.
So...you have literally no way to kill any hero who has 1400 HP or more. You have literally no way to kill any hero who has a BKB, a Euls, a Manta, or any kind of mobility/disjoint skill.
As if Brood didn't drop off hard enough past 20 minutes, you're buying items that ensure that you're completely and utterly out of this game past 25 minutes. Because at that point you can't rely on your spiderlings anymore, and you have the carry potential of a Crystal Maiden with Enfeeble.
But if like the typical pub scrub you want to get tons of early game kills and still lose the game, then be my guest, go play dagon Brood.




I don't know who first had the idea to buy Gem of True Sight on invisible heroes to detect Sentry Wards, but that person deserves a million reports for intentional feeding seeing how many games this idea has thrown up to today.
If you want to detect sentries either buy your own Sentry Wards or buy a Necronomicon.
Buying a gem on Brood is utterly stupid and it will just get you detected with Dust of Appearance and feeding a gem to the enemy team.
Don't do it, ever.




Please no. Sange and Yasha is completely outclassed by Manta Style in every way on Brood, just like on the majority of agility heroes.
See the Manta Style section for why Brood is a Manta hero without hesitation. The only thing you get from SnY over Manta is a slow, but Brood has enough slow to chase already, and 16% proc chance is pretty pathetic anyways.
Get a Manta Style because it's just way too good on Brood, and if you want another disable go for Skull Basher/ Abyssal Blade

Gameplay

Here's a rundown of what a successful Broodmother game should look like. I'm focusing primarily on the early game, since this is when you need to make plays. Anything after 25 minutes is considered late game for Brood, and late game is way more straightforward because it's essentially limited to right-clicking stuff and trying to split push.

But first, a very important part about microing Brood : the hotkeys.

Set up your hotkeys :

Select hero : Selects Broodmother (F1 for me)
Select all units : Selects Broodmother and her spiderlings (F2 for me)
Select all other units : Selects her spiderlings only (F3 for me)

This is the most convenient way to micro Brood. This way I press F3 to select the spiderlings, F1 to select the hero, and F2 to select both. Similarily to playing Lone Druid, you need to split up Brood and her spiderlings and give each stack different orders, so you need to control them separately all the time. Don't think you can always keep Brood and her spiderllings together, if you do that you're just going to feed. So learn to micro them separately.


Getting the 0 minute rune

Brood is a pretty good hero for securing the 0 minute rune. 100 gold is nothing to laugh at, ESPECIALLY for Brood who needs a Soul Ring ASAP, and the XP is really good as well.

The nice part is that you can both secure the rune and block your creeps.

Walk to the rune spot as soon as you got your starting items. Put a web over the rune spot like this :


About 10-15 seconds before the rune spawns, go hide in the unpathable portion of the web (the cliff on top of the picture), there you are completely safe from kill attempts.

Watch the enemy heroes come to the rune. Look at their inventories. Do they have Sentry Wards or Dust of Appearance? If they do, fall back to the safe side (bottom left on the picture), you don't want to feed first blood. Often you will see enemy heroes wasting their detection to secure the rune. That's a good thing, they have no way to kill you where you are.

If they don't have detection, don't hesitate to trade hits with enemy heroes. When the rune spawns, try to snatch it by sitting where it spawns.

If you play it well, either you walk away with the rune, or you walk away knowing who's laning against you and if they have dectecion (and make them waste some detection along the way).


Warding against the enemy mid and supports

Always start the game with an Observer Ward. Have a support give one to you, or if your supports suck, buy them yourself, I don't care. My starting build is only 400 gold, there's ton of space for 150 gold of wards, so always have a freaking ward when you go to your lane.

Other offlaners often like to use that ward to block the pull camp, or get vision of it. Never block the pull camp as Brood, there's absolutely no point. Brood doesn't care about pulling. Pulling only gives you free kills because it splits up the enemy heroes, so you actually *want* the enemy supports to pull. So don't waste your ward to prevent pulling.

Instead, use your ward to control ganking paths. You want to prevent the enemy supports from sitting in the woods to set up kills on you (and if they do, you want to see them and kill them). You want to prevent the enemy midlaner from ganking you. You want to see everything that's going on in the enemy woods. So ward the runespot, ward the woods, ward behind the treeline to prevent roaming, etc.

Here's an example of ward :


That's the classic rune ward. this ward allows you to see both the enemy roaming supports and the enemy midlaner if they ever try to come to the jungle and set up a kill on you.

This warding spot is pretty classic, there are a ton of other warding spots so feel free to experiment. But remember : nobody should be able to come gank you without being seen by your wards.


Farming your soul ring (0:00 - 1:30)

Once you have the rune and have placed your ward, go back to your lane and don't forget to block your creeps.

Once the creeps arrive in the lane, place a web where they meet the enemy creeps. Now you're sitting in lane and trying to get your farm.

First thing you need to do is look at the enemy heroes' inventories and see if they bought Sentry Wards or Dust of Appearance before coming to their lane.

If they do have detection, be very careful, because Brood is one of these heroes who really risk feeding first blood. If you had a good creep block, the creep equilibrium should be very close to your tower so you're relatively safe from kill attempts.

At that stage play very passively, don't feed, and try to get last hits. You can shrug off harassment by regenerating from your webs and eating your Tangos.

Always rush your Soul Ring. You already have the recipe, get the components from the secret shop.

Once you're level 3 and have your Soul Ring, the fun begins.


Killing heroes / Diving the tower

Start building your spiderling army. Use your level 2 Spawn Spiderlings twice, by using the mana from Soul Ring. Keep last hitting creeps with spiderlings because of Spawn Spiderite. Now you have lots of spiderites as well!

Look if the enemy heroes have Sentry Wards in the lane (easy to see by checking enemy heroes' inventories). If they do, buy your own Sentry Wards and destroy their wards with your spiderlings. If they try to contest your sentries, just kill them.

How to kill heroes:


Select your spiderlings only (F3), move them behind the enemy hero so that you can bodyblock him and cut off his retreat, and right-click him. Your spiderlings will make quick work of him and slow him as well. DO NOT commit your hero to the kill, always have Brood sit back at a distance and let the spiderlings do the work.

If the enemy hero is retreating outside you your webs, use Spin Web for more webs to chase him down.


Once the enemy hero is low enough, get the last hit with Spawn Spiderlings. Now you have even more spiderlings xD

See why you shouldn't commit the hero? Because you don't want Brood to get focused. In this example Bane was an easy kill despite Mirana and Juggernaut sitting there out of vision, however if you moved Brood forward she would probably have died.

Diving towers :


Brood is ridiculously good at tower diving with the spiderlings to tank tower hits. When diving, it's the same thing, always commit your spiderlings to the dive but leave your hero just outside of tower range, and simply get the last hit with Spawn Spiderlings.
This way, just like this poor Treant Protector who's getting dived 4 minutes into the game, they'll have nowhere to run :)


Dealing with AOE counters

Of course, all that fun relies on the enemy team having little AOE damage. Otherwise they can just farm the spiderlings, and you'll have just fed them 200+ gold.
Luckily spiderlings have 450 HP. Very few heroes can deal 450 AOE damage in the early game.

But if they have enough AOE damage, what do you do? Does that mean that Brood is completely useless against heroes with AOE?

Not exactly. Essentially Brood can deal with heroes with AOE, but she needs to take them on 1 vs 1.

Example :


Here you see Brood popping Insatiable Hunger to manfight an Axe, while her spiderlings are sitting on the side. Axe is a hero that you can't focus with your spiderlings, but if you pop your ultimate and right-click him, he can't do anything and you can kill him pretty easily.

Essentially the trick when facing AOE heroes is to start by killing all their low AOE teammates with spiderlings, and then, once they are alone, pop Insatiable Hunger and manfight them 1 vs 1 without using your spiderlings.

When facing AOE heroes also remember that Spawn Spiderlings is an extremely strong harassing skill if you use it as a nuke, especially once you start acquiring mana regen items. So when you see AOE heroes who are sitting your lane, spamming Spawn Spiderlings on them will eventually force them out of lane and/or make them easy pickoffs once thy are low HP.

If several heroes with high AOE are sitting in your lane, you can't do anything but wait for a better time to strike. The only thing you can hope for is that you're making space for your team, which should be using this space to push other lanes, secure Roshan, or simply freefarm.

If too many AOE heroes are sitting in your lane (3 or more heroes), you need to farm the jungle with spiderlings. Always keep up your farm when you can't kill heroes.


Pushing T1 and T2 towers (2:00 -> 12:00)

So, you got those early kills? And everytime they TP'ed back to your lane, you just patientely waited for their TP and killed them again? The enemy team gave up on your lane and stopped coming? Great, you won the lane, you can now push down the T1 tower.

When pushing towers, always keep your eye on your Observer Wards so you don't get ganked. You can also use your spiderlings as wards! Take a lone spiderling from your pack, and send it to scout the fog. Spiderlings have pretty good vision so take advantage of it.

When the T1 tower falls, keep pushing! Place webs along the lane on the path to the T2 tower, but also place webs in the enemy jungle, especially around the jungle camps. Controlling the jungle is very important not only because it allows you to farm it, but also because it prevents the enemy team from farming it, making their comeback impossible. Hunt down any enemy hero who tries farming camps.

Then take down the T2 tower, while either putting down some more aggressive Observer Wards or using spiderlings as wards.


Farming jungle with spiderlings

Brood has a very strong flashfarming ability with her spiderlings. Take advantage of the farming ability of the hero! When you are not going for kills, send your spiderlings to farm the enemy jungle.

Select your spiderlings, split them in two stacks if necessary, and a-click each stack on a jungle camp.
Using the shift key can also make it faster. Select a spiderling stack, press shift, a-click on one jungle camp, and then a-click on another jungle camp while holding shift. This way your spiderlings will farm the first camp and move on to the next camp when they are finished.

Keeping your farm up is extremely important to stay relevant in case the game goes late. Brood can farm as fast as an Anti-Mage so take advantage of it.


Pleease get out of my lane!

Pub players often have issues understanding Broodmother's role : SOLO PUSHER.

Sadly you will often see teammates coming to your lane. Even though they're often coming with the best intentions : to gank your lane, to help you push, etc, they're actually making a big mistake by coming there. They're just slowing down your game by sapping your XP/farm and accomplishing nothing, and they really shouldn't be there.

Brood doesn't need people to gank her lane. She doesn't need help to push. She's a solo hero, she can do everything by herself. Instead your teammates should be pushing the other lanes.

Make it clear to your team that you want to solo your lane and that they should push the mid and safelane towers instead of coming to your lane.


Warding around the enemy base

Once you got the T1 and T2 towers, it's time to put down more Observer Wards, and more webs. This time, you want to completely control the enemy jungle, and even if possible you want vision in the enemy base as well.

Here's a good example of wards and webs to place :


Here the ward on the hill gives vision of the whole enemy jungle, and the ward in the enemy base, just at the edge of the high ground, allows to see the heroes defending the tower. The webs cover the whole part of the enemy jungle close to the base, and go inside the base around the T3 tower and barracks.


At the door of the enemy base...no feederino

Okay, so you killed everything in your lane, and you managed to push the enemy T1 and T2 towers in less than 15 minutes. Great, you got a good early game.

Now don't get cocky, that was just the easy part. Now comes the hard part : Sieging the high ground, and going for T3 tower/barracks.

Now beware : you're going to need to be extra careful. You are at the point of the game where you can throw *extremely hard* and completely lose the game by making stupid mistakes. So be extremely vigilant, you really don't want to feed 1500 gold to the enemy Faceless Void with your beyond godlike streak. Besides, if you die at that point, it will take you a billion years to walk back to your lane and push it again up to the enemy base, so feeding will set you back a lot. So first thing first, whatever you do, don't feed.

Another thing : up to this point you have been playing solo dota, without even looking at what's going on in other lanes. Now is the point where you need to start working with your team. No matter how well you play, you can't break high ground on your own, so you will need your team to make space elsewhere on the map.

Most Broods I see do extremely well up to this point and get T1 and T2 towers easily, but end up doing nothing and feeding once the time comes to break the high ground. So beware that.


Coordinating with the team and securing objectives

Brood is a space-creating hero. With all the mess you're making in the offlane it's very likely that the whole enemy team will sooner or later come to your lane and try to shut you down. And when they're literally 5-manning your lane, they're nothing you can do anymore.

The thing is, they shouldn't be able to 5-man your lane for extended periods of time because when they do, your team should be using the space to take objectives.

Only issue is, pub players suck at pushing. So it's very likely that, when the enemy team is 5-manning your lane for 5 minutes straight, your team is just sitting in jungle and lanes AFK farming and doing nothing. This is obviously terrible play. When there's nobody in their lane, they should be pushing the mid and safe lane towers and taking Roshan.

So my advice is, when the enemy team is 5-manning your lane, first thing first don't do anything stupid like diving into 3 heroes out of boredom : as I said don't feed you scrub (^^). Instead, send your spiderlings to farm jungle (keep up your farm!), wait in your webs, and look at what your team is doing. If they're doing nothing and AFK farming, look at what they COULD be doing. If your midlaner can push the tower, ask him to push. Same for your safe lane carry. The mid and safe lane T1 towers should be down at that point, if they aren't there's really something wrong. Does your team have good Roshan heroes? Tell them that they can go Roshan : with all the space they have, it's really a free Rosh.

About Roshan, if your team for some reason refuses to get free Roshs on their own, Brood is a really good hero for doing Rosh herself. Incapacitating Bite works on Roshan and gives him 60% miss chance, and with the lifesteal you can manfight him easily. It's a bit slow though so doing it with your team is always better, but you can solo him if nobody is doing it.


Sieging and diving high ground / getting the T3 tower and rax (12:00 -> 25:00)

Now is the deciding moment : going for the rax.

At that point the enemy team should be completely unable to leave their base. The vision you get from your wards in the enemy jungle means that you can solo kill any hero who goes through the jungle, and the free pathing from your webs allows you to pass over the hills instantly.

And if you get an uphill ward inside the enemy base, you can see the enemy heroes defending the T3 tower.

So essentially to break the base :

• If the enemy team is massing behind their T3 tower, there's nothing you can do for now. Just sit in jungle and farm, and pick off anybody who comes out of the base. Meanwhile your team should be pushing all the outer towers and taking Roshan.
• If one or two heroes are sitting behind the T3 tower and you see the other heroes in other lanes, you need to dive them and kill them. Do not hesitate to dive the enemy base for kills on one or two isolated heroes.
• If your team manages to make space elsewhere on the map and keep the enemy team busy, be a true rat and take rax.

Generally the best way to break the enemy high ground is to have your team push the lane opposite to you (top lane if you're bot and inversely) and make space with this push, so that the enemy team can't deal both with Brood and the rest of her team. You need to coordinate with your team to push the two lanes at the exact same moment.

The glyph can make you waste time in your push. Generally the trick is to bait the glyph : when there are creeps under the tower, attack the tower first. This way it will force the enemy team to glyph, and once the glyph gets popped you can switch to attacking the creeps (this way you don't waste time attacking nothing).

Also don't be afraid to use your Black King Bar to push rax, it's completely worth it.


Late game (Anywhere after 25:00)

So you didn't manage to push the enemy rax around the 20 minute mark? You're now in the late game : For Brood anything that's after 25 minutes is essentially late game.

In the late game Brood is a semi-carry. She's a pretty solid semi-carry, similarly to heroes like Bounty Hunter, Viper, Bristleback...you get the idea. So build damage items to keep yourself up.

She's almost impossible to kite with her high movement speed and slow, and Insatiable Hunger is actually a pretty good steroid. However she's limited by the fact that she is a purely single target melee right-clicker, and her lack of teamfight presence.

You need to join your team more often than not at that point of the game. You can't just sit in your offlane all game long and expect to have any game impact. For example Brood is actually a really good hero for defending your towers and base ; so TP to your towers if they are getting pushed. However always go for the split push whenever you can, because this is Brood's best strength. Boots of Travel allow you to go to a lane and instantly set up webs there to go for the split push. Take advantage of your web charges.

Brood is definitely not a hard carry in terms of scaling, but when you think about it, neither is Shadow Fiend, or Anti-Mage, or Sniper. Just like these guys, Brood can still have a lot of late game impact simply by outfarming everybody else and being 1 or 2 items ahead of the enemy carry. So don't forget to keep up your farm with your spiderlings for the late game!

Foes and Food

Here's my experience on how Broodmother matches up against every other hero in the game, and some tips to deal with them.

From easiest to hardest :

Food tier

outworld devourer
Probably your best food of all. These ranged heroes are really good at harassing single targets but they are completely clueless when spiderlings start swarming them. These guys may be a nightmare to lane against for most offlaners but for you they are just spiderling food.



Safe lane carries with no AOE are pretty much free kills.



Squishy supports with little or no AOE are your best food. Weak AOE skills like Crystal Nova or Earth Spike don't do anything. Single target disablers like Lion or Shadow Shaman are a huge problem to a lot of offlaners, but for you they're just spiderling food.



Living Armor gone in half a second from spiderling attacks? Yes please.



Single target gankers who will likely try to shut you down, but instead Brood will simply turn against them and kill them.
Easy to predict with Observer Wards (did I say you need to ward the jungle?), and let your spiderlings own them.
It's especially funny to see Pudge kill himself with Rot trying unsuccessfully to farm your spiderlings and end up feeding for the 10th time, or Mirana hitting spiderlings with arrow everytime.



Enemy junglers not only can't do much to shut you down in lane, but since Brood takes control of the enemy jungle even very early into the game, these heroes are left with absolutely nowhere to go otherwise they simply get killed. This way you can shut down not only the safe lane carry but the jungler as well.



Bait his spin with spiderlings, and just walk out of it. Since spiderlings can walk in and out of his range at will, Blade Fury can't do anything.
When his spin in on cooldown go back in with your spiders and get the kill with Spawn Spiderlings. Easy.



These guys do have AOE skills but they're just so ridiculously easy to avoid that they don't count :)



Extremely momentum-dependent carries who absolutely need to get their farming item ( Battle Fury or Radiance) at a good timing.
Brood is probably one of the best heroes to shut them down completely in the laning stage, and delay their farming item to...never essentially. These guys have essentially no way to come back from a bad start in lane.



Plasma Field deals almost no damage to units who are in melee range of Razor. So he has nothing against spiderlings who focus him.


Easy / Mildly annoying tier



Mystic Snake can be disjointed by using invisbility. And Split Shot just doesn't do enough damage early game, plus the number of targets is limited. She can't do anyting against you in the early game.
Only problem is that she's really good at counterpushing once she gets a few levels/farm.



Annoyingly hard to kill heroes but they have nothing against you.



These guys have nothing against spiderlings and you own them in lane. But they can come to gank you. Always have wards ready and turn on them with spiderlings, usually they end up ganking themselves :)



Double Death Pulse *does* kill your spiderlings, but he'll be dead before he can get the second one off.
Orchid shuts him down completely.



Pretty easy to shut down in lane if you chase him around, and a free kill once you get your orchid.
Only starts becoming a problem much later in the game, but if you owned him in lane he can't come back from it.



Whirling Axes (Melee) is an absolute pain to lane against because of the miss chance on spiderlings. Generally the trick is to split your spider army in two, send half of them to bait the axes and then send the rest to go for the kill.



It's pretty unlikely that you lane against this guy.
If you do, Ion Shell is definitely a problem in lane. However he's a terrible hero against split push and orchid shuts him down completely.



Thunder Clap is pretty annoying in lane, but you're probably not laning against him.
Generally he's solo mid and starts ganking once he has his blink. So watch out for his ganks and try to turn them around.
Orchid shuts him down completely.



Extremely annoying hero especially because of the true sight. However he has nothing against spiderlings so you can turn his ganks around if you buy detection. Buy Manta Style to purge Track.



Battery Assault is pretty useless against you because spiderlings tank the damage. There's no way he can solo kill you. However watch out for his long range initiation if his team is nearby.



Only problem with this hero is the true sight from Lightning Bolt. He has nothing against spiderlings, Arc Lightning damage is pretty negligible honestly and he'll be dead way before it does anything.
Orchid shuts him down completely (if he doesn't rush Euls)



Waveform deals quite a bit of AOE damage in lane, but he can't spam it because of mana issues.
If you shut him down in lane he can't come back.



Only issue with this hero is that Greevil's Greed can net him a ton of gold off your spiderlings.
But he has natively no way to kill spiderlings ( Acid Spray is completely insufficient), so he's absolute food in lane. Besides Orchid Malevolence makes him only able to stun himself.
Only an issue if he gets a Mjollnir or Battle Fury to wreck spiderlings, but since you'll shut him down hard before he can get one, not a problem.



Has both some AOE and high armor. Pretty annoying but still not that problematic.



Infest is surprisingly annoying, so is the magic immunity from Rage. Pretty hard hero to kill actually. Luckily Orchid shuts him down completely.



Nobody likes to get Doomed, but since this hero is such a greedy pick regardless of whether he's safe laning, offlaning or jungling...you can generally steamroll him in the early game.



Dual Breath is some reasonably powerful AOE, but luckily his cast animation is horrendous, so you can dodge it pretty easily with your spiders. As long as you do that (and do the same for Ice Path), he's food.



Shockwave is very, very spammable. Pretty annoying hero to lane against.
Later in the game, he's only a problem if he can afford to solo-RP you every time. If that happens, report your team :)



Juke Nether Blast by using the high movement speed of your spiderlings, and then go back in and focus him. If you do that he's easy food in lane.



He can steal Spawn Spiderlings and Spin Web and be very, very annoying. He's still food in lane though. Fade Bolt only cuts down half of your spiderlings' damage since they're considered as creeps.



These two guys are pretty much food in lane, but if they ever get farm they can punish your split push extremely hard and solo kill you whenever they want. Shut them down early and hard.



In theory Avalanche + Toss can oneshot your spiderlings, but he just doesn't have the mana to do it. He's food in lane.
Only starts becoming a problem when he gets farm. Orchid shuts him down pretty hard.



If he maxes Lightning Storm and skills Pulse Nova at 6, he can be a problem to deal with. Luckily he'll probably go for a terrible build like maxing his stun (which is incredibly easy to dodge) and not skilling his ult before it's too late.
Depends on skill, but a decently played Lesh can probably shut you down especially with another AOE hero.



Stampede is annoying to deal with for pretty much every hero. If he lanes against you (very unlikely) Double Edge on your spiderlings hurts. Luckily he damages himself as well so try to split your spiderlings in two stacks to take him on.



She has some decent AOE in lane with Splinter Blast. Winter's Curse on you is pretty hilarious but your spiderlings still can't kill you in 3 seconds, not even close.
Still a fairly easy kill in lane.



High burst damage, lots of AOE, and often goes Euls as a first item making orchid useless against him.
If he's laning against you he's food. But if he's solo mid and gets a good start you have a problem.
Buy a BKB and get dust.


Potentially problematic tier


Aah, Earthshaker...who hasn't seen these videos on Youtube when an ES blinks in and Echo Slams a Brood with her entire team and gets a rampage?
So is ES the ultimate counter to Brood like a some people seem to think?
Actually...no. He's really not.
Actually ES is pretty easy to deal with. His lane presence is relatively weak and he has no AOE damage in the early game. He's just spiderling food in lane honestly. And he's almost guaranteed to lane against you since he's played as a support.
So not only can Brood beat ES very easily in lane, but then Orchid Malevolence and Black King Bar (almost core items on Brood as I said) shut him down completely.
ES *can* be a problem once he gets his Blink Dagger, but how is he going to get it? When you play Brood, the game is probably over before he even gets his blink. And even when he has blink, he has nothing to deal with orchid and BKB.
Essentially, ES is only good against Broods who don't know how to play Brood. What kind of noob Brood would stick up with her team and 5-man push against an ES? As long as you don't do an obvious mistake like pushing base while sitting in the middle of your spiderlings against an ES with blink, you're fine. Instead, let your spiderlings push on their own and leave your hero behind in safety.
Essentially there's no reason for you to *ever* sit in the middle of your spiderlings against an ES, so when he gets blink, Echo Slam can only kill the spiderlings but not your hero. And then, just orchid him and kill him.
Hero is still a problem if he gets an early blink around 15 minutes. But since you control every place where he could farm it, this will only happen if your team is feeding HARD.



Fairly strong counterpusher with Powershot spam. Like Keeper of the Light but not as bad. And can manfight you with Windrun.
Annoying hero both in lane and later in the game.
Buy an orchid (and a MKB) to shut her down.



A well played Lina is an absolute pain to deal with. Not only does she have two AOE nukes, but she also goes for Euls as first item, which makes your orchid useless.
You can't do anything about Dragon Slave, however Light Strike Array is pretty easy to dodge with your spiderlings.



Crypt Swarm has literally no cooldown and she also goes Euls as first item.
Luckily she's still very squishy and she's probably solo mid anyways.



A carry with good counterpush and AOE.
Luckily he's extremely easy to shut down in lane since Flak Cannon hardly deals any damage at that stage of the game and Call Down is just so easy to dodge.
Shut him down in lane and you're fine. Later in the game his counterpush and pickoff potential can really become a problem if you let him get farm.



Actually one of the best laning heroes against Brood...but only if he maxes Great Cleave at 7 instead of leveling up his stun. If he goes for any other build he's food.
If he *does* go for the max cleave build with a Mask of Madness or something, move him to the next level and look at the Axe and Bristleback sections for how to deal with him.



He's food in lane, and orchid owns him completely...however if you don't shut him down HARD there's no way you can survive Chronosphere later in the game.



Both have good AOE presence and have an escape mechanism. They're among the rare heroes who have a chance at beating Brood in 1 vs 1 mid.
However it's very unlikely that you're laning against them, they're most likely solo mid and they'll be ganking you.
A fast orchid is the answer, and wards.



He's actually food in lane, because Tidebringer is just not enough AOE.
However this guy is probably laning mid, and his combo Xmark->Torrent->boat is wayyy too reliable and will own you pretty hard unbless you have a BKB.
Only a problem if he's ganking you hard.



Extremely annoying hero because of Sand Storm, especially in lane. Buy detection so you can actually hit him during Sandstorm, and you can shut him down.
If he gets early blink he can gank you pretty hard though.



Ebola Spirit pretty much counters every hero in the game. Problem is that he comes online extremely early in the game and can gank you extremely hard.
Try to dodge his roll. Buy orchid and BKB. And ask Icefraud for a nerf :)



Pretty unfair lane counter to Brood because of Kraken Shell. He takes literally zero damage from spiderlings.
Luckily he only counters you in lane, later in the game he can't do anyting against you.
Build right-click items and attack him yourself. Skill Insatiable Hunger at 6 when laning against him and you should be pushing him out of lane.



Can gank you extremely hard in the early game, even go for first blood on you at level 1.
Luckily he has no AOE so your spiderlings own him completely. Get wards to see him coming and turn his ganks around.
If you're fed up of getting charged you can just buy a Linkens.



Literally the zombie apocalypse. Tombstone makes a zombie for every spiderling and Soul Rip will hit really hard.
Buy an orchid or attack the Tombstone. Try to keep the spiderlings away when he uses it.



He's food in lane, but he's probably not laning against you.
Flaming Lasso completely destroys split pushers in general.
Wards are your best ally. Or Linkens.



Actually a really problematic hero. Not because he can kill you with mines (buy sentries and necrobook you scrub ^^), but because this hero can literally one-shot creep waves.
He can sit behind his tower and spam down creep waves with mines and stop your push.
Generally you need to dive him and kill him to stop him from doing that. Orchid and BKB help a lot here.


Difficult matchup tier


This big dirty fish can be a nightmare to play against. Not just because amplify damage gives true sight, but also because it reduces your armor to less than zero, AND his stun, AND his bash, AND his Blink Dagger, AND his movement speed.
If he blinks on you, you're pretty much dead.
Only reason this guy is not nightmare tier is because he's food in lane, and he has nothing against spiderlings. But he's probably the best hero in the game for killing Brood herself.
Manta Style dispels amplify damage...that's the best advice I can give.



This hero is a pure pain to play against.
He has good AOE presence in lane with Quill Spray, and Bristleback makes him almost unkillable. Even worse, he really likes going for Vanguard/ Crimson Guard as a first item, and this item shuts down your spiderlings completely.
Essentially you can only damage him with your own attacks.
Wait for hiom to be alone (if he's not then focus his teammates instead) and when he's on his own pop Insatiable Hunger and just right-click him to death. Skill your ult at level 6. If you do that you can out-damage him pretty easily and his only way out is to TP out. Go for an early Skull Basher to manfight him and prevent him from TP'ing away.



Counter Helix...need I say more?
Same thing as Bristleback, your spiderlings are useless, you can only damage him with your own attacks. If he's alone, right-click him to death with Insatiable Hunger, and if he's with teammates, kill his teammates with spiderlings.
For the same reason, if he's laning against you an early Skull Basher is the way to go (orchid does nothing). Once you have it there's no way he can defend against you or get away from you.



Triple Shadowraze deals 900 AOE damage. Requiem of Souls deals up to about 2000. AND he likes going for Eul's Scepter of Divinity first item. Bleh.
Generally you shouldn't be worried about this guy in the offlane since he's almost always played mid. But if he's played as a safe lane carry or he sits in your lane to counterpush...your lane is probably going to suck.
Try to focus him at melee range with spiderlings. This way only his melee raze can hit the spiders and not the other ones.
It *is* possible to beat him 1 vs 1 by skilling Insatiable Hunger and right-clicking him. But this only works if his teammates aren't there.



Luckily there are hardly any good Wisp players in pubs because he's not playable in solo queue. But if you have the bad luck of being against a tryhard stack...expect a Relocate gank every minute from the other side of the map. Split pushing against this guy is an absolute nightmare.



Counters Brood both in lane and in the rest of the game.
Reactive Armor means that your spiderlings hardly deal any damage to him. And he has enough AOE to clear them.
Buy orchid.



He's not called Imba spirit for nothing.
Flame Guard destroys spiderlings, Sleight of Fist allows him to counterpush and clear waves all game long, and he can gank you extremely hard.
Buy orchid.



All this hero ever does is sit behind towers and spam Illuminate all game long to counterpush. And he just loooves buying items like Euls, ghost or Forcestaff so you can't catch him out.
You need to tower dive him and kill him. Anything goes. Go for something like Blink Dagger + Scythe of Vyse or Abyssal Blade if you really want him dead, with also Diffusal Blade if he buys Ghost Scepter.


Nightmare tier


Laning against this hero is completely impossible because Overwhelming Odds literally one-shots your spiderlings.
Split pushing against a LC is also almost impossible.
Buy a Linkens. Don't pick Brood.



Same thing as Keeper of the Light, all this hero ever does is sit behind towers and in the woods and spams march. He doesn't even need farm to shut you down.
Except that he can actually kill you with Dagon/Eblade or permasheep you if he gets items. He's probably the strongest 1v1 hero in the game.
Blink/Abyssal or blink/sheep is the only thing you can do, better with a BKB. But more often that not you really can't do anything.
Don't pick Brood.



Jumps you from half the map away and suddenly you're dead, and you can't do anything about it.
It's literally impossible to split push on your own against a Storm.
Of course you go orchid and BKB against him, but no matter what items you buy it won't prevent him from solo killing you. Nice balance Icefraud.
Don't pick Brood.



He nets your spiderlings and Poofs them. Goodbye spiderlings.
He completely owns Brood in lane. He can clear your spiderlings as soon as he hits level 5 essentially. Orchid does nothing against him, BKB is the only thing you can buy that does anything but it's just not enough.
Besides he can gank split pushers like nobody else and solo kill any single hero in the game. Nice balance Icefraud.
Don't pick Brood.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading. I will happily reply to any kind of constructive feedback so don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments.

Changelog :

• 5/04/2015 : Published