Silent Death (Laning Shadowblade Doom)

Introduction

This is a guide for an active laning Doom Bringer, if you want to afk farm jungle for 30 minutes then there are plenty of other guides available.

Doom Bringer is an extremely versatile hero, able to adapt to various situations by consuming and taking the abilities of different neutral creeps as well as being able to purchase a variety of different items with his powerful farming ability.

The most common suggestions for Doom Bringer seem to vanguard radiance, the kind of build that is insanely powerful early to mid game but can quickly become useless if the advantage is not seized. It also means that Doom becomes mostly useless as he tries to farm his items.

You will want to pick Doom Bringer if:

• enemy teamfight potential lies in 1 or 2 key heroes.
• there are extremely slippery heroes like Storm Spirit, Queen of Pain, Anti-Mage, Weaver, Phantom Lancer, Clinkz or Faceless Void that you want to shut down.
• teammates have damage auras or otherwise able to buff each other.

Avoid picking doom if:

• there is already an invisible hero on the team
• there is a surplus of armour reducing heroes on enemy team
• you may be forced into a lane that suffers heavy harassment

Pros / Cons

PROS Versatile High Base HP Powerful Auras Deadly Ganker Hard Shutdown on Single Target

CONS Slow Movement Speed Limited Teamfight Presence Low Armor Low Mana

Items

1. GETTING EARLY DAMAGE
Start off with some generic Tango, Healing Salve and ironwood branch, whatever you find appropriate. You'll want Stout Shield to take those harass hits and don't bother with clarity potion because you aren't going to be use too much of it with just Scorched Earth and Devour. You want to get Phase Boots ASAP and also devour an Alpha Wolf when you get the chance. When you have both Packleader's Aura and Phase Boots you'll be dealing close to double damage, this should give you good last-hitting as well as hero-smacking power. Ring of Basilius can be picked up early if you do in fact find yourself lacking mana and getting harassed, you can build it into Vladmir's Offering or disassemble it for a Soul Ring.

2. OBTAINING SHADOW BLADE
The key to this build is your Shadow Blade, it's rather easy to build and gives you extremely powerful ganking potential. Try to buy the Claymore first so it's not immediately obvious that you are getting a Shadow Blade.

3. SOLVING MANA ISSUE
At this point your core is complete and you can choose either Soul Ring or Drum of Endurance to alleviate your mana problems. Soul Ring can give you mana on demand and acts as an useful healing tool when you activate it followed by Scorched Earth while farming jungle or just moving between lanes. Drum of Endurance the the other hand can give you a nice speed boost, is useful in ganks and the general stats are far more useful if you are the kind of player who manages their mana properly.

4. JOURNEY TO END GAME
To be honest I cannot tell you what to get towards end game, it depends on the situation you're in and what kind of things your team needs. If you've kept up a healthy eating regime then you should realistically be able to buy whatever item you want.
A general guide would be Black King Bar followed by Daedalus if you are trying to be the main carry.

Heaven's Halberd and Shiva's Guard if you need to counter the enemy carry.

As of version 6.78, Aghanim's Scepter makes it such that a doomed enemy within 550 range of you remains doomed without duration ticking down. This means you can effectively keep an enemy doomed indefinitely unless they run away or kill you. This may be useful if you find that teamfights are lasting long periods of time or that you have had problems with doom running out before you successfully end a chase.

Alternatively Vladmir's Offering and Assault Cuirass will give nearby teammates a combined 45% Bonus Damage and 35 Attack Speed Bonus if you also have Packleader's Aura which is terrific for pushing lanes and teamfights.

DISLIKED ITEMS

Hand of Midas: this might allow you to get incredible farm if the game drags on beyond 40 minutes, but it takes a whole 10 uses to pay for itself which even when used immediately ever cooldown will take you 1000 seconds, or roughly 17 minutes. Not only does this delay your Phase Boots and Shadow Blade that you'll need for early game ganking, it costs about the same as great teamfight items like Drum of Endurance or Vladmir's Offering.

Radiance: radiance is a common pick-up for doom, but because you are relying on stealth and aggressive burst in this build, it won't be of much use. Toggling it on and off produces unnecessary distractions, leaving it on ruins your invis and it should be built after shadow blade which means it'll be delayed and less useful than otherwise.

Skills

Devour: This skill is your most important early game skill, it will not only give you a healthy injection of gold but also allows you access to the ability of neutral creeps. Max this first and use as often as possible.

• Don't put yourself in danger just to use your devour as soon as it's off cooldown, the gold isn't worth the death
• Familiarise yourself with what neutral creeps have what abilities so you don't accidentally replace your powerful abilities with useless ones
• Try to devour lane creeps on low health as to not push the lane too much.

Scorched Earth: This ability has three components, it increases your movement speed, increases your regeneration and burns your enemies. I sometimes max this before I even get lvl? death because the regeneration and burn is often underestimated and causes enemy heroes to overcommit into a gank.

• Doom Bringer is slow with only 290 base movement speed, this skill is vital to keeping you alive early game.
• It has reasonably high cooldown with 45 seconds at level 4 (29 seconds minus the duration) but don't be afraid to use it to heal if you think you can have it ready for the next gank/teamfight.

lvl? death: This is a very powerful nuking spell, it gains a bonus damage and a ministun if cast on enemies that are a certain multiple of levels. The ? comes after LVL because Death is pretty much certain.

• You generally won't get to use this too often early game because of your extremely low mana.
• Keeping this skill at level 1 means that as soon as both you and your laning opponents hit level 6 you can combo it with your doom for an almost certain kill.
• Don't be afraid to use it on heroes that aren't at the right level, at level 4 it's still a moderately respectable 275 damage nuke.
• This skill only has 8 second cooldown, making it quite spammable if you have enough mana.

Doom: DOOOOOM! is your all powerful single target ultimate, it deals damage over time, silences, prevents item usage and even disables some passives. It has a modest duration of 15 seconds and is one of the most powerful single target abilities in the game. List of things disabled by doom.

• This should be used at the start of a fight to basically lock out one of the enemy heroes.
• Avoid using this on escaping heroes as they can be denied.
• This ability goes through magic immunity (without removing it) and is most hilarious when you stop a juggernaut mid-spin.

Creeps

Alpha Wolf: This is the most useful creep you can eat, it gives 30% bonus damage in a 900 AoE and also grants you a 20% chance to deal 2x critical hits.

Forest Troll High Priest: The heal isn't really too useful but it comes with a 2 mana regen aura which could give your lane partner some much needed mana, it's also an aura which has no risk of pushing the lane so it can be considered in some circumstances.

Dark Troll Warlord: The raise dead skill can be used to push lanes, pull and/or stack neutral camps(if you find yourself in the short lane) while the snare is capable interrupting channelling through BKB as well as being a modest range disable. However with 50 manacost on raise dead and 150 manacost on snare, these abilities will be used very sparingly.

Satyr Soulstealer: If you are in one of those dangerous lanes with strength heroes that have big nukes but small mana pools then the 100 manaburn(costs 50) will really improve your chances in lane and annoy the hell out of your enemies. This is only for very early laning against heroes like ES, Tiny, Sven, SK or even PL and Juggernaut.

Ogre Magi(No, not that one...): For 40 mana you can grant yourself or an allie 8 armour and a melee range slow on attackers for 45 seconds, I find this to be better than the wildkin aura. But given the mana cost you won't be able to keep it on yourself for a prolonged period or cover an ally as well. A quick double tap on this skill early game could be the difference between life or death.

Personally I don't really bother with the rest of the creeps, people tend to like centuar but casting War Stomp will usually mean you won't have mana for doom or lvl death, the aura is much worse than Alpha Wolf. Same story with Furbolgs, Wildkin, Kobold and Satyr where either the active ability costs too much mana for too little result or the aura is inferior to Packleader's Aura. Though you might consider Satyr Regeneration Aura if you are jungling for a bit and need some regen, but be sure to replace it before you leave jungle.

WHY NOT PURGE, THUNDERCLAP OR WARSTOMP?

Taken from Satyr Trickster, Ursa Warrior and Centuar Kahn respectively. These abilities all serve a similar purpose, a disable for the hero that has none. However they all similarly suffer from the same problem, extremely short range and high mana cost. Obvviously there are still situations where they are useful but it will honestly be very difficult for you to walk up to melee range of an enemy and get one of these off early game and mid to late game you will want Packleader's Aura. I don't consider these as useless skill but more risky skills as they require you to close the distance and rarely guarantee a kill (Imagine how often you would hit enemies with Sand King stun if it did no damage and you didn't have sandstorm).

Of course if you have a Magnus or Enigma on the team then that War Stomp will give your team a very long stun on the enemy team.

Team Work

Doom Bringer Likes:
Honestly anyone who can protect his bit armourless behind in lane is terrific. But here are just some special combinations. It's also extremely powerful to have other damage boosting auras on the team, effectively granting double damage to every team member in a teamfight.

Venomancer: Not only is he a good babysitter, if an opportunity arises for a Venomous Gale combined with your Scorched Earth you may be able to net a first blood.

Rubick: He should probably be mid but if you find yourself a Rubick in the lane then that fade-bolt combined with your regen will make sure nobody beats you down.

Crystal Maiden: Helpfully solving your mana problems, once again slowed enemies plus sprinting flaming demon is a big plus for you.


Doom Bringer Dislikes:
You are going to have the same problem heroes that all strength heroes with no stun face but there is a few special baddies.

Slardar: It's not bad enough that he's going to reveal you when you use shadow blade, he also has to take away your already pitiful armour such that you go deep into the negatives. Avoid at all costs!

Rubick: Though not a walking ultimate like some other heroes, your ultimate still makes up a significant part of your hero, as hinted by the fact that it's literally the name of your hero. So if your Doom is stolen by another hero you should feel extremely violated and embarrassed.

Vengeful Spirit: Stun and armour reduction, this will be very painful early game but you can take satisfaction from the fact that you are probably going to be smacking her around a lot late game.

Ranked Play

THIS BUILD WAS FORMULATED IN HIGH/VERY HIGH PUBLIC MATCHMAKING

You will basically be playing doom bringer as if you were a roaming/ganking Bounty Hunter or Nyx Assassin, as such good Observer Ward placement is absolutely vital along with MAP AWARENESS. Always carry Town Portal Scroll and don't be reluctant to buy Observer Ward if your team has none (It's literally 1 devour worth of gold).

1. EARLY GAME
You will hopefully not be the main carry in which case your place is in the long lane (top for radiant and bot for dire). Obviously the key to early game is using your Devour to farm, getting as many last hits as you can in lane and using Scorched Earth to escape if necessary. Just survive and farm until you get to level 6 at which point if you have a level in lvl? death you can use it with your Doom for a potential kill. Otherwise just focus on getting your Phase Boots and Shadow Blade so you can start ganking.

2. MID GAME
Your goal is to have Shadow Blade by 15min, make sure you also have Packleader's Aura and begin ganking. Target the heroes that are out on their own and always try to gank the enemy carry. Ganking the enemy carry is perhaps the most important part of this strategy, you aren't aiming to carry late game so even if you trade deaths with the enemy carry then your team is coming out ahead. It is tempting to eat those squishy support heroes like popcorn every time your doom is up but it's the carry kills that are going to win you the game, if you can repeatedly delay that stupid PL who is rushing a radiance then your game is as good as won.

If you are lucky enough to score a crit on your Shadow Blade hit then you will easily remove half of a hero's hp and should immediately Doom followed by Scorched Earth, Phase Boots and auto-attack. Only use lvl? death if absolutely necessary because it will eat up a lot of your armour. Obviously you want to keep an eye on the minimap to be ready to respond to tower dives or possible killing opportunities. (The way I do this is to take a quick peek at the minimap when my hero is swinging for a last hit)

3. TEAMFIGHTS
Your job is to sneak around the side and take out those squishy supports, normally Doom Bringer lacks presence in a teamfight unless he has Radiance but if you have Packleader's Aura then you are granting a massive 30% bonus damage to allies and won't have to worry about not contributing. Use Doom on heroes that have crucial abilities that can dominate teamfights, otherwise casting Doom on a carry will disable passives and abilities that allow the hero to deal damage or escape.

4. LATE GAME
Just like the item suggestions for late game, how you play is entirely dependent on the circumstances of the game. Having a Vladmir's Offering can help your team do big pushes, Heaven's Halberd will render doomed carries completely helpless, Shiva's Guard will make you a scary AoE tanking powerhouse and any combination of damage items will make you a full powered carry.