Parabolian's 6.82 Brood, Solo Offlane

Why you should listen to me about Brood.

I am pretty dedicated brood player, on Dota Buff I am in the 91st percentile of brood players. As of 10/10/2014 I have 281 games a 3 KDA and 60 percent win rate with brood. Currently I bounce around 3.9k-4k MMR.
Here is my dotabuff for reference: http://www.dotabuff.com/players/6833905

Before the Horn Sounds!

Brood is almost always played offlane, ideally solo offlane. So with these tips are written with that in mind. I also do not write about uncommon builds such as forgoing spiders to max out e. Just the conventional build of getting the W and Q maxed first (with sometimes getting ult at level 6)

Starting items. I have seen a lot of debate about this. And everyone is different. But I am pretty much 99 percent convinced that soul ring is the best item on Brood at the start of the game. With that in mind I buy a Sobi Mask the soul ring recipe, 1 set of tangoes and 1 clarity pot. I buy the ring of regen from the side shop to complete the soul ring as soon as possible.

At the beginning of the game immediately get a ward from your support, and skill your W (Web). Then run down the lane as soon as possible well before the horn sounds. Place your ward as to get vision of the pull camp but not block it. You want to know when the enemy is pulling so you contest it with your spiders.

Lay a web near the secret shop slightly to the left so that you have good coverage in the woods to hide. This will allow you have your second web charge up by the horn sound which you should usually lay directly behind the first one under your tower. Now if the lane shifts or if you mess up your block you have pretty good coverage.

Run back to the front of your base to block to the offlane. You are not going to contest the rune, your move speed is garbage outside your web and its not worth the resources or risk to try. Focus instead on getting a good block

Laning Phase Begins

When the game truly begins immediately check the inventory of each enemy in your lane. Check your mini map for all the enemy heroes. You want to make sure they don't have blue wards/dust. And that they are not hiding in wait. Sometimes good players will plant blue wards before the horn to surprise you. There is a real risk that you will give up first blood in this case. The first two minutes of the game you are pretty vulnerable, play defensively if need be, use your best judgment. Of course you always want to be as aggressive as safely possible.

One way to check to see if they have truesight of you is to send a spiderling forward towards the enemy creeps, if they are not otherwise engaged the enemy creeps will attack your spiderling thus giving away the truesight. Note your spiderlings are obviously only invisible while in your webs. And this won't work in the first moments of the game since you won't have spiders yet!

If they do have truesight you probably want to hold off on the purchase of your soul ring to get some sentry wards of your own. The trick here is the de-ward battle, you should 9/10 win this. First don't drop your blue ward until the creeps are way pushed past the suspected enemy wards spot. Make sure you have a good amount of spiders to help you attack the rune down too.

Early Game

As the laning phase develops you should focus on last hits and denies. If they dont have truesight this should be fairly easy. Hold brood momma right next to the creep that is lowest, strike at the perfect moment. Immediately after hitting the creep run directly backwards. The idea is that they will not be able to harass you for taking that hit. Even if their ranged attack animation goes through you can still fade back into the webs and disjoint the hit. Using the same technique you can often get trade free hits on the farming carry.

Once you get your first level Q (Spawn Broodlings), which should be at level 2. The fun really starts. The Q button used to be much more forgiving, due to I guess what was a bug you were able to get your babies even if the target died mid projectile launch. This is a real fear, since the nuke is only 75 dmg you have a tiny window to fit it in. The best bet sometimes is to look for a creep that is somewhat low but not dead and nuke it then attack it once to get the babies out (recalling there is a tiny window of delay before the spawn broodlings buff disappears from an affected unit). Sometimes the enemy will help you by denying a creep you just nuked. The one time you are happy to see a your own creep denied.

Brood has terrible base damage, (47). Against a high base damage and skilled last hitter you are going to lose the last hit war. However, once you get the spiderling army going, you are almost certain to win. Simply attack click your brood momma and the spiderlings on anything low. Again positioning is key here, you want it so that you and your spider army strike all at once for a burst.

Soon you will have a nice little army of spiderlings, remember you even get spiderites from denials, this includes denying your own spiders, as long as the spiderlings get the orb attack applied before they die.

Time to get First Blood

You are starting to feel comfortable in the lane, you have imposed your dominance, your lair is established your babies are burgeoning, its time get get first blood.

This is where brood becomes really mean, it should happen by level 3 or 4 but you will have a good 10 or so spiderlings. It's quite simple at this point. Begin sending your army at the enemy.

Try not to do so where they will draw enemy creep aggro. You don't have to commit for a kill everytime. Sometimes its good to get chip damage on them and draw them out. But the idea is to surprise the enemy with the amount of damage your broodlings can lay down on them. So wait until you have 8-10 spiders. Your best bet is to start your army directly behind the hero (only works if they don't have vision of course) Their natural instinct is to run backwards

Trapping
Prior to the 6.82 patch it was easy to surround the enemy with your brood army. Now the broodlings have this weird habit of clumping all together in one tiny unit. This has some advantages though. It actually makes them easier to use for those who don't have RTS practice in enemy trapping. Since they can all hit at the same time for fully effective DPS. Rather than tripping over one another.

If they have a hero like Lina with an AOE nuke you want to try to bait this out before committing. Sometimes splitting your army in half is a good way to do this. Immediately after casting their nuke you should move in with your entire army. Of course if possible try to avoid the first nuke. These spiders are now super-fast so you can do it.

Tip on Microing with Brood. Of course everyone is different but I my preferred method is to have brood momma herself in control group with the 1 key. I actually dont have her spiderlings in a control group since they die so quickly its hardly worth it. What I do is use the lasso method to control them. (Click drag your mouse to get all your units.) Then you send them at your enemy. And press the 1 key to separate the brood momma from the pack and hold her back if need be.

You as the brood mother don't even have to get your hands dirty when running at the enemy heroes, your right clicks help of course and if you feel it's safe join your children do it. But the best part of brood is that to ensure a kill you rarely have to expose yourself.

What I will do is hide in the webs on the outskirts of the tower and try to get in the finishing blow via a my nuke.

Juking: Enemy heroes will often juke in the grove of woods above their tower where they are protected by fog of war and the tower damage. When you are sending your broodlings at them you are going to have to redirect them because they will stop when getting fog of war juked. Simply A-click them in the general direction the hero ran. They will swarm in there and seek him out. Also place a web there so they can phase over trees and move faster. You can also join them back there most times pretty safely.

Sometimes the heroes will make it pretty far away from the tower back towards there base, a chase here is not always bad, you can lay webs deeper into enemy territory to make your spiders move faster and potentially get the killing blow with your nuke. This is a risky maneuver and you might get punished for it, so be careful.

Laning Phase Breaks Down

The lane phase will go one of couple ways. The players are low skilled or stupid. They will continuously come back to your lane and feed you kills. They may call for ganks so be ready. When getting ganked, the best thing to do is send your current brood army at the squishiest hero, just right click on them. Then focus on juking/running with your brood momma. Often you will at the very least get a return kill if they do get you. Use Line of sight to juke like normal and keep trying to get into the trees.

They may abandon the lane, in which case immediately pressure and take the tower. If they TP in try to kill them. If they abandon also you should start spreading out and taking over their jungle, use your lings to farm as many of them camps as you can. The hard carry may retreat into these woods so seek and destroy. Request aggressive wards, ideally one on their plateau so you can see them coming and anticipate

As brood its easy to farm 3 camps at once, the micro here may be a little intense especially with the added phasing changes your spiders now have a very annoying habit of getting stuck in trees, also they may not attack a camp they are sitting right next to if you have auto-attack turned off and they are in a web. So just be aware of these things.

When I dominating, because I farm their entire jungle and a lane I usually can out last hit everyone in the game, here is just one game example for reference: http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/950705850

Most times you can take their T1 and T2 towers fairly easyily going uphill however is a another matter, the only time i find in the early game that this is possible is if my team is engaged and distracting the enemy, always be ready for that scenario.

However, the web charges for the new brood allow her to contribute to team fights much earlier now (or i guess at all) its easy to move from the enemy jungle into the mid lane by simply placing a few webs there,

Brief Item Build discussion.

I am not going to discuss absolute must have items beyond Soul Ring. I have tried so many different builds for brood and many of them are quite successful. Prior to the 6.82 patch I would make Sange and Yasha 95% of my games. But with the added speed bonus I am not as hot on this item anymore. I will however talk about items I like and why.

Orchid great versus Slark, AM, Faceless Void, Ember Spirit, QoP, Puck, basically anything squishy with an escape. If I do Orchid I try to get this within the first 15 minutes or not at all since it has diminishing returns.

Radiance/Hand of Midas the uber greed build. If you are absolutely dominating your lane and knocking down towers, owning their jungle these are definite considerations. Again I cant get the radiance in the first 15-20 minutes I do not bother. Prior to 6.82 I was super hot on the Midas too, mainly because between the solo off lane exp, easy kills and jungle camp, I would often out level everyone in the entire game, including the mid players. And Midas made that happen even faster. However, with the new bounty changes being, a uber high level with a nice streak is a huge liability now.

Basher/Abyssal great item on brood compliments her chase play style quite well, also some smart enemies till tp out when you engage on them, Brood is much like Blood Seeker in that regard.

Daedulus Huge crits, quick burst, good synergy with ult. I am quickly learning to love this item on brood.

Treads I build treads on Brood 98 percent of the time. SometimesI will go Boots of Travel, for split push fun. And even more rarely I will get Arcanes, normally when going dagaon/e-blade.

Butterfly Great vs. PA and Faceless void now especially with the 6.82 change. Between your miss orb and this you are able to go toe-to-toe with just about any hard carry. That is until they get smart and buy an MKB/BKB.

BKB Probably one of the most important items on Brood who needs to carry. I would say after Soul ring this is the second best item on Brood. When you pop your ult and your bkb together, you can manfight even with 3 or 4 enemies on you, since your lifesteal is so high.

Dagon/E-Blade again if you are roflstomping your lane and they are team full of squishies this is well worth it. Esp. good against pugna, and tinker that use decrep or ghost scepters, as well as PA with her annoying evasion,(dodge this!). You might also need an orchid to support the intense mana cost this entails. I call this the clown build when you feel like the game is totally getting out of hand use this build to finish it and for funsies.

Vlads I think is very situational on brood. Sure it helps you push and gives you lifesteal, but you are not always with the team so it does not benefit them that much. I do not often go this item. But I see its merits.

AC One of my personal favorite items, helps brood in all the right places, great pushing item, helps her right-clicks and buffs her babies.

Heart Good against nuke heavy lineups/burst teams. If it buys you enough time to recover and turn on your ult it will let you turn the fight around.

Manta Great for breaking Dust. Pretty big investment though. I consider this a must versus Slardar and Bounty Hunter though, often as your first big purchase.

Necro Book I know people are in love with this item. I know it can help you split push. But I feel it has gotten nerfed pretty hard over the last few patches. Its still a nice item, but the cooldown is long, it really falls off late game and can actually feed the enemy. If you have a super push focused lineup like a furion, DP, Lycan. Then this is a good pickup, as you first big item. I will also get it for techies and other stealth units for obvious reasons. But I find myself going this item lately only about 1 in 10 games. Maybe its because it does not compliment my play style. Brood can be a rat there is no doubt, but with necro book, you lose some of your manfight/pick-off potential that another item could provide.

Sheep Stick. this is a situational item, but against very evasive heroes like Storm Spirit, ember and void I think its a nice add.

I mentioned my clown build and my super greed build that i show above, the last build is when they really hate you, sometimes you are going to get an Axe, LC and Earth Shaker against you. Cuz let's face it people hate spiders, S and Y is always a nice pick up on Brood and is easy to build since its most expensive component is 1k gold. BKB is also great since its most expensive component is 1.6k These might help you turn around a game where you did not start off too hot.