Let The Hooking Begin! - A Guide To Pudge

A fun but risky item just for fun is radiance xD as you now have an extra 50 burn dmg on top of rot haha

You should add these items:

Hood of defiance -> Less self punishment from using rot.
Shadowblade -> Fun to further snowball if you are far ahead.
Blademail -> Punish squishy heroes for attacking you or Nuking you.
E-blade -> Anti carry tool
Dagon -> If your combo is not enough to kill someone
Gem/wards etc -> Dealing with riki and others


Remove the rapiers, its ridiculous and doesn't fit pudge's style.

Not sure why you have treads in your build, but that doesn't fit pudge's style at all.
Pudge needs either mana boots or face boots -> i.e. more hooks or more effective rot walking.

Think about/explain better your item choices and the order:
Urn,Boots or Bottle first? What comes after? Did you consider magic stick/wand?
What comes after? Finish boots or make your force staff first?
At what stage/after having what items do you start building your tarrasque?

Will you consider Blink Dagger a good item on Pudge, or is just the Force Staff enough (Reference to 6.79)

Thank you everyone for the suggestions!

@ Hi-Breed

Sorry about the miscalculations, I will fix them later on. To add a photo, hold down Ctrl + I, and paste the link in between.


@ Yatsuna

It is actually situational to upgrade the hook, so I will change the skill build. Thanks for the input.

@ Peppo_oPaccio

Thank you very much for your comment. I will add these items in my build. The way I play Pudge is quite limited, so it was wrong of me just to include my build.

The reason I get Heart of Terrasque as core sometimes, is that it makes you quite invincible mid game.

Just a few suggestions:

You should never level up Hook first. If you have the ability to first blood before the creep spawn and you will only get the first blood if you level up Hook, then go for it, but don't do it in the fountain when you have no idea what will happen. Rot at level 1 makes it almost impossible for you to miss a last hit. Rot + 1 autoattack is very hard to deny against. Also, as Peppo_oPaccio mentioned, in certain matchups you can kill the other mid lanner with your Rot. Also, Flesh Heap is retroactive, meaning you don't need to level it up to get charges. So you should max rot first, before Flesh Heap.

Items: Heart of Tarrasque is a good item for a lot of strenght heroes, but it is a very late game item. You shouldn't put it side by side with other items such as Bottle and ForceStaff

No Scythe of Vyse? No Shiva's Guard? No Drum of Endurance? I've always found the formers quite useful on a snowballing Pudge, depending on my needs (disabling hard carries, contributing in teamfights); the Drums on the other side are a cheap extension to get more movement speed (along with stats) and grant your team some benefits at the same time. I don't really like the Heart of Tarrasque as having 3000HP and no armor is way worse than having 2000HP, a good amount of armor and a teamfight ability/the assault aura, but that's personal preference (actually, I find the HP regen quite useful but not enough to build a Heart on Pudge). I even saw pro players building a Heart, though.

About Aghanim's Scepter: personally, I think Pudge's one of the worst Heroes when it comes to ultimate upgrades. After the ganking phase (past the mid game), a normal Pudge player would stay with his team as his lack of mobility is a big disadvantage when it comes to escape from ganks, then try to hook unaware players. In this case Dismember is mainy used to stun the enemy for a long time; the extra damage is negligible. Same for teamfights: being able to stop the carry for three(!) seconds is huge and, as most of the time you would dismember BKBed carries and you'll deal no damage, the bonus from Agh's is wasted.

And lastly, about the skill build: you say that getting Meat Hook at level 1 is useful for first bloods, but with Rot you can get level 1 kills even more easily. For instance, if you're up against a mid laner with low mobility ( Beastmaster, Night Stalker, Sniper, Drow Ranger, Huskar...) and you just follow them with your Rot on, unless they reach their tower fast enough (which is normal, but you'll deal a lot of damage to them in this case) you'll get a kill; also, toggling Rot on and off while killing creeps gives you a higher chance to get the last hit.
And past level 7, I'd rather max Rot first since the damage increase is very noticeable (and is your main source of damage while Dismembering) and you can regain the health you lost with an Urn charge; Flesh Heap is retroactive anyway so you get all the extra HP even if you killed enemies before putting points in it.

I would get Rot at level 1 for easy last-hitting. Another is I prefer maxing Rot and Meat Hook before Flesh Heap since you need to maximize your damage output.


I think you should add Blademail as one of the extensions as it works well with a well-fed Pudge which have tons of health.

you should try godlike tier with 4 Hearts of Tarrasque, One Rapier and one BoT. XD

I like it, too. ^^

I just found out by doing some math that his Meat Hook+ Rot+ Dismember combo goes for

270+3*60+3*75=675 DMG when properly timed,

even more if he wobbles his Rot around you before he Dismembers you.

That's quite a lot for the early level 6 mid hero and obviously ensures a first kill on almost any downrated enemy laner!

So in order to counter him with my Chaos Knight, I'll definitely need some help from a disabler mate.

Bottom line, it's better to prevent Pudge's combo than feel it on your FLESH (heap).

Ward up!

Edit:
Hmm, can you please help me put some pictures on my guide, too?

I don't know how to insert an item/spell/hero picture.

Yours looks nice, and is really easy to follow; mine is just a wall of text.

Thanks in advance,


Hi-Breed

The guide needs some more content, but I like what it is, keep it up.
+1