The Foreseer - an Oracle overview

Introduction

Oracle is an intelligence hero who provides equally offensive and defensive capabilities, bursting down and debuffing enemy heroes, or saving the life of his allies. Oracle is an extremely capable support who can unleash the full potential of any hero, whilst possessing strong semi-carry potential himself.

What defines Oracle is proper usage of his skills, namely when to use them, what order, and whether on allies or enemies. If poorly used he can hurt his team, but in capable hands is an extremely effective ally and a major frustration for the enemy team.

Pros / Cons

Pros

+ Works in almost any line-up, and has an answer for almost any situation.
+ High intelligence gain
+ Purge is a very powerful debuff and relatively uncommon
+ Has access to a constant strong dispel, another uncommon benefit
+ Can counter some annoying enemies that are otherwise hard to deal with (Omniknight)
+ Can focus exclusively on keeping allies safe, or be a damage-dealer and disabler.
+ Can also be a decent semi-carry due to:
+ Spammable nukes that can burst down enemies in fights.
+ 620 attack range, only exceeded at base by Drow, Clinkz, Lina and Techies.
+ and 1.4 Base Attack Time, which on a ranged hero makes his right click potential very decent
+ A higher skill ceiling than most heroes, his potential is great, but...

Cons

- ...in bad hands, he can sabotage your allies and do the wrong things at the worst times
- Squishy, with poor base and growth stats for Strength and Agility.
- Has a poor turn rate, hampering his responsiveness in hectic situations.
- Somewhat reliant on mana items to use his skills regularly, as they are expensive.
- Is reliant on his skills even with items, making silence a strong counter.
- Limited escape capability
- People will probably focus you every time because you are a pain.

Skills

Oracle's skillset includes four active skills, which must be used together to bring out the hero's strengths. Knowing exactly what his skills do is very important, so treat him like Invoker or Earth Spirit - do not play him in real games unless you have practiced with him first.

Fortune's End

A channelling spell that purges and deals damage to enemies in an Area of Effect around the target. The purge has a unique quality of reducing the target's movement speed to 0, making it a pseudo-disable but not a stun or snare specifically. The longer the ability is channeled the longer the disables's duration, however the purge and damage will be the same even if the channeling is cancelled early. It is the only spell Oracle has that he cannot use on allied units.

Cast range: 650
Effect radius: 215
Damage: 75 / 150 / 225 / 300
Snare duration: 0.5-2.5 seconds
Cooldown: 12 seconds
Mana cost: 130
(This ability is used only on enemies)

This spell is essentially a nuke and a snare/root in one (though keep in mind doesn't possess the usual benefits of snares such as disabling blinks, revealing invis units, etc.). What makes it truly useful is that it is an AoE purge to remove positive buffs from enemies. Use it to get rid of things like Drum of Endurance, Guardian Angel, or even rune buffs. Also can help in clearing creep waves, though it has a somewhat high mana cost and CD and flames arguably is better at securing last hits.

This skill is designed to synergise with your other abilities. Your Purifying Flames is a powerful nuke with a low cooldown, but will heal your enemies over time - Fortune's End will allow you to remove the healing buff immediately after they take the burst damage. Fortune's End and Purifying Flames are almost always used together when attacking enemy heroes.

Fortune's End has a projectile, but Purifying Flames hits instantly, use this to your advantage by casting Fortune's End and hitting an enemy with Purifying Flames in the small delay before the purge lands. This is tricky to pull off reliably as it requires you to be a certain distance from your target and take cast animations into account, but it is useful to practice. If this seems too risky, you can simply cast Purifying Flames on a target, cast Fortune's End on them, and then instantly cancel the channel to immediately purge off the healing buff.

Although it is a channelled spell, you are not always meant to maintain the full channel every time you use it. The damage and purge debuff are the exact same regardless of the channel time, the channel time only affects the duration that enemies are snared, and similarly to Alchemist's Unstable Concoction, it is usually better to hit multiple enemies with a 1 second disable than one enemy with a longer one.

This skill will actually work on Cycloned enemies, provided you target it on the model itself and not the ground. You can use this to purge off enemy cyclones and make them instantly vulnerable, or synergise it with your own Cyclone. This makes Eul's Scepter of Divinity a fantastic pick-up for Oracle as it will also purge off flames, allowing you to do a great deal of damage and disable time on lone targets if you combo your spells correctly.

This skill will also purge off Oracle's second skill, Fate's Edict. The purge also occurs before the damage portion of the spell so the spell shield will not block the damage. Keep in mind that outside of magic immunity this is the only other way to purge off Fate's Edict.

Fate's Edict

A unit target spell that disarms the target, and gives it immunity to magical damage in the form of a spell shield that blocks all magical damage, but it also amplifies any pure and physical damage they take for the duration by 50%.

Cast range: 700
Duration 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 seconds
Cooldown: 12 seconds
Mana Cost: 50
(This ability can be cast on both allies and enemies)


Can be compared to Decrepify, but in a sort of reverse role. The 100% magic resistance (not to be confused with spell immunity) can save an ally from magical nukes and DoTs, disarm an important enemy carry for a full 6 seconds, or amplify physical and pure damage on an enemy hero. Its effects are absolutely identical if used on either enemy or ally, so knowing what it does and doesn't do and when to use it is crucial. Don't go using Fate's Edict on a target about to be bursted down, and don't use it on your right click carry just as they're ready to attack.

Outside of battle you can combine the spell shield with Purifying Flames to heal allies whilst guarding them from the initial magical burst damage. It is also quite cheap at 50 mana, and 12 seconds is a respectable cooldown, allowing it to be abused in lane to disrupt the enemy's ability to last hit, and harass them whilst they find themselves unable to trade hits back. Once you have three skill points in Fate's Edict, you'll be able to use Purifying Flames twice before the buff wears off, any less and you'll just end up damaging your ally with the second cast.

You can also use it on creeps! Disarming one of your lane creeps will cause it to stand still and not attack, which can be useful for delaying the wave and pulling your lane. And of course you can use it on enemy creeps to assist in pushes. In

Six seconds is a very long time to disarm enemies, making it relevant way into the late game. Traditional purges won't remove this debuff either, only magic immunity can, forcing enemy carries to get Black King Bar when they would otherwise not want to. Unlike Heaven's Halberd it is also the same duration on melee and ranged heroes, so it essentially gives you one of the most potent and disruptive anti-carry abilities in the game.

Fortune's End will purge this spell from enemies, so you do have the opportunity to correct a mistaken Fate's Edict. If you need to remove it from an ally you will have to use False Promise.

Purifying Flames

Oracle's best skill, and what defines him as a hero. A unit target spell that deals up to a hefty 360 burst damage on a unit, but also applies a stackable heal-over-time buff that heals for up to a total of 396 health (for a total of 126 net healing on most hero units). The heal is stackable, and at a measly 2.5 second cooldown this is an incredibly strong skill offensively and defensively. As you might have guessed, Oracle's other two spells affect how this works.

Cast range: 750
Damage: 90 / 180 / 270 / 360
Heal per second: 11 / 22 / 33 / 44
Heal duration: 9 seconds
Cooldown: 2.5 seconds
Mana Cost: 50 / 60 / 70 / 80
(This ability can be cast on both allies and enemies)

Much like Fate's Edict, this is a multi-purpose spell. When used on allies you will damage them, but they will eventually gain more health from the healing buff than the damage they initially took. With only a brief cooldown of 2.5 seconds this means you can stack multiple healing buffs on one ally. It functions almost exactly the same whether you use it on an ally or enemy, the difference being that it can kill enemy units, but deals non-fatal damage to allies. Keep in mind it is considered as hero damage and will disable some effects such as ( Healing Salve, Clarity, Urn of Shadows, Blink Dagger and Heart of Tarrasque), so use it responsibly.

You usually want to use Fate's Edict on an ally and then use Purifying Flames, since Fate's Edict can block the burst damage but the healing buff still applies. Using Purifying Flames to heal allies without shielding them from the initial damage is fine, but unless they are healthy and currently farming then it's usually best to shield them first, especially in pubs where people aren't going to enjoy being damaged at all.

What makes it so important is it can also be used offensively. As a nuke it deals a high amount of damage, with a small mana cost, on a really short cooldown - the range is very good, and it has only a short cast animation and the damage will land instantly. This and Fortune's End make Oracle extremely potent as a nuker as he can drop people to low health very quickly and has no trouble finishing off low health enemies.

The only problem of course is that you will also heal enemies with Purifying Flames, but you can use Fortune's End and other purges (such as Cyclone) to remove the buff. In some cases, you can output enough damage that you kill an enemy hero before the healing buffs catch up. The sniping power of Purifying Flames is excellent, but don't get into the habit of taking kills you don't need.

As of 6.84, Purifying Flames can now be cast on creeps, which transforms Oracle's laning presence into something much greater. In a core role (for example on the mid-lane), you can use Purifying Flames to last hit, and due to the cooldown, range and low mana cost this ability has, you can feasibly take every single CS on the lane with ease as long as you have the mana for it. With higher levels of Flames, you can control the lane by bursting your own creeps into deny range for you to then finish off, either pulling the lane or simply denying creeps before the enemy carry has a chance to take them.

In most scenarios this is usually worth maxing first, as a majority of heroes simply can't stand up to such frequent burst that early on and because you also get a potent heal out of it too.

False Promise

Oracle's Ultimate, and one of the best buffs in the game. False Promise can be placed on allies to save them from bad situations, initiate, or fight for an extended period of time than would be safe otherwise. When used it will delay all damage and healing, remove all negative buffs, and continuously remove any new negative buffs every 0.1 seconds until the end of the duration. At the end of the duration, all the damage and healing dealt during the buff will be applied at once, killing or saving them depending on how much was sustained. As a bonus, all of the delayed healing on your ally will be doubled once the duration ends. With an up to 8 second duration, this makes Oracle very strong when paired with an ally that can abuse that 8 seconds of near-invincibility.

Cast range: 1000
Duration: 6 / 7 / 8
Cooldown: 80 / 60 / 40 seconds
Mana cost: 200

Allies with this buff can still die from the accumulated damage dealt once it ends, and the kill will be credited to the original damage dealer, so don't think this really does make heroes invincible, however you can also use your purifying flames alongside other heals to provide a great deal of doubled healing to people with this buff, potentially saving them. If the target hero has its own source of health regeneration from abilities or lifesteal, they also benefit greatly from this ability.

Keep in mind that False Promise damage will pierce through banishments such as Cyclone and ignore damage return from actives like Blade Mail, and cannot be dodged or mitigated, only balanced out with the doubled healing. Units that go invulnerable whilst taking fatal False Promise will die once their invulnerability ends, there is almost no way to avoid it. Fatal damage will not pierce through Dazzle's Shallow Grave, so heroes who are affected by Shallow Grave when False Promise ends can survive.

In most circumstances you use this on a carry and let them go to work, the enemy team either can't or won't bother expending effort on fighting them. But of course this can be used on any ally, use it to assist fleeing heroes, or provide initiators a guaranteed teamfight. Keep in mind that whilst it continuously purges debuffs, it doesn't prevent the debuff from taking place, so stuns and interrupts will still break channeling.

False Promise usually keeps an allies health at a certain amount for the entirety of the buff and so any spells or passives that operate based on a heroes health will take that value into account. Negative HP Regeneration from Heartstopper Aura and any kind of HP removal ( e.g. Armlet of Mordiggian, Burning Spear, Sunder) will alter health during False Promise. Heroes can die during False Promise if they are under the threshold for skills such as Ice Blast and Culling Blade, and they will not be prevented from committing suicide if they use Bloodstone or Suicide Squad, Attack!.

False Promise provides a visual indicator of the affected hero's health change when the buff ends. The brighter the Sun the more damage they take, and healing is indicated by green effects, this indicator then changes as the hero gets healed or takes damage throughout the buff duration.

Support Item preferences

Oracle's skills are strong, but costly. This means he is mostly item independent but what he does buy should help his mana pool.

Oracle is best played as a support, but can easily be a capable semi-carry or ganker if you so choose. Support Oracle is probably best placed in a dual or tri-lane since he is a good babysitter and can harass quite well with his excellent range and low BAT, but don't stray too far from lane as Oracle definitely needs experience. You can roam with Oracle using Fortune's End as your CC, but if you aren't part of a duo and aren't ganking a lane with a reliable disable from its occupent, the effectiveness of this might be limited and leave you underlevelled, which you really don't want.

Support

Starting Items



Since you are not particularly reliant on gold to be effective (i.e. a support), buy wards or courier to start, and some regen.

Core


You want Boots as soon as possible, and if you are not sure what to build you can't go wrong as your team's Urn of Shadows holder. Urn of Shadows is an excellent item for Oracle due to the heal and damage synergising with all of his skills, and the components are great too.

Cheap items like Magic Wand and Soul Ring are good, as is Medallion of Courage which has fantastic utility and combines well with your Fate's Edict to increase physical damage. Mekansm is recommended as it's a good item on most squishy intelligence heroes and the burst heal will be doubled for anyone with the False Promise buff, it can also be combined with Arcane Boots to create Guardian Greaves later on.

Pretty much all Boots are good on Oracle, so it's a matter of preference. Arcane Boots will support the cost of your spells and items like Mek. Phase Boots help positioning and harass, and Power Treads are good for a right click Oracle who doesn't want to be blown up instantly. Tranquils can also work but I don't like them personally, you spend alot of time attacking and you have plenty of healing capability already, but they can be nice alongside a Soul Ring. Another option is to skip upgrading your boots and just rush a Eul's Scepter or Force Staff, then get Boots of Travel later, a perfectly valid option if you had a good start.



Eul's Scepter of Divinity is a great item on any intelligence support, the same is true for Oracle who likes mana and can certainly appreciate the movement speed boost. Especially the Cyclone active is great for disabling enemies, but more importantly it will add a second purge to your toolkit, allowing you to cast Purifying Flames a third time and use the Cyclone active to remove the healing buff. The cyclone active can also be used on yourself to purge off Dust of Appearance during False Promise, and you can even target fortune's end on cycloned enemies. In most circumstances this item is Core and you should always consider it.

If you can't get Eul's, Force Staff is your next best option for the intelligence boost and the utility it provides you.

Luxury



You should keep your team supplied with what they need, but if you do come across extra money you can put it towards items to bolster your mana pool and survivability of you and your team. A mobility item such as Blink Dagger or Force Staff is never a wasted purchase as positioning is everything for squishy supports in the late game. Ghost Scepter and Black King Bar are also good, and patch 6.84 introduced a bunch of other new items for utility supports. In the late game, you will need Boots of Travel.



Scythe of Vyse is rarely a wasted purchase on any intelligence hero and you can definitely use the mana. Necronomicon will help you with pushes and provide true sight, Orchid Malevolence will provide a decent disable if you don't think you can get sheepstick.

6.84 Item Additions

The 6.84 patch introduced a bunch of new items that give lots of new utility options to Oracle.



Glimmer Cape is a utility item that provides Oracle the ability to turn himself or allies briefly invisible and provide extra magic resist, useful whilst channeling Fortune's End or to try and slip away from enemy focus. If you decide to pick up a Medallion, Solar Crest provides an excellent upgrade option for more armor changes and throws in a blind or evasion buff too, works amazing offensively with Fate's Edict, or defensively with False Promise. If you decided to get Arcane Boots and Mekansm, you can now turn them into Guardian Greaves, which provides mana and regen like before, as well as a regeneration aura that increases the bonus for low health allies, works excellently with all your skills. Lotus Orb is slightly more on the expensive side, but it provides both armor and regen, and has a useful active that provides either Oracle or his allies a handy buff that dissuades enemies from focusing them down with single-target spells.



If you are a fed Oracle, you can consider an Octarine Core, has great stats for any snowballing intelligence hero, but is very expensive so consider it the ultimate luxury. It will give you 25% lifesteal on your Fortune's End and Purifying Flames, but more importantly reduces all your cooldowns by 25%.

Octarine Core Cooldowns:
Fortune's End: 12 -> 9 seconds
Fate's Edict: 12 -> 9 seconds
Purifying Flames: 2.5 -> 1.9 seconds
Fortune's End: 40 -> 30 seconds

Remember Octarine Core also affects item actives, so if you have items like Eul's Scepter of Divinity or Scythe of Vyse you'll be able to use them more often too.

Other item options

Oracle thrives in a mid or off-lane role. He can disrupt the enemy's farm, and makes great use of the early gold and experience boost to then keep pressure on the enemy, and make space for a hard carry to farm.

Semi-Carry

As a semi-carry Oracle you want to take a mid or even an offlane role to get solo experience. In the early to mid game you can take advantage of your survivability and burst to gank, control the map, and deal heavy burst as fights go on. You can then make use of your excellent range and BAT to decent effect, both of which scale well with right-click items.

You have no true carry skills but Fate's Edict will increase your physical damage and disarm enemy carries allowing you manfight easily, and False Promise makes you very tricky to deal with in fights or pursue if you're retreating. With solid base stats and the ability to pick fights or escape easily, Oracle has solid carry potential but falls off late when true carries enter their element, so you need to retain a gold and exp advantage and finish the game in a timely manner.



Phase allows you to chase and position decently in fights, but you tend to spam spells alot so you may prefer Treads for this and the extra bulk. Orchid is probably the best item for its cheap build-up and decent support for both your spells and your right click damage output, as well as a good active that prevents disables and increases your damage output.

Generally an Intelligence semi-carry wants to get flat Attack Speed and Damage items such as Maelstrom, Desolator, Daedalus. However, items like Scythe of Vyse are usually better as they will give you disables to fall back on in late game. And of course don't forget the Black King Bar, if you the situation calls for it. Mask of Madness is particularly decent too as all damage you deal during False Promise will have double the amount of lifesteal.

Nuker/Ganker

You can also build Oracle in a way that focuses on your burst combo, of which Purifying Flames is the core. This is more of a mid-oriented build that focuses on ganking and pressuring other lanes, roaming the map and shutting down enemy cores. Eul's Scepter will give you the mana regen and movement speed to effectively control the map, and items like Diffusal Blade and Dagon will either extend your burst combo or make it stronger. Ideally you want to snowball as much as you can to make space for your main carry to farm in safety - if the game drags on and you begin to fall off, it's easy to downgrade to a support and disabler role with items like Scythe of Vyse, or try to transition to a right-click carry].

Friends, Foes and Food

Oracle has a versatile kit, and fits into most line-ups and can generally cope against most heroes. Oracle does well when combined with another defensive support who can then focus on keeping an offensive carry alive, but can also take a solo mid role and focus on keeping the enemy tean down with his burst. He should never be a position 1 carry and similarly does not reach his full potential as a position 5 support.

Friends

Special mention goes to Huskar, who synergises amazingly with Oracle. Oracle can keep healing Huskar with Purifying Flames since the nuke damage will be reduced, and use False Promise] on him at low health so Huskar maintains high attack speed from Berserker's Blood and outheals any physical or pure damage he takes with Inner Vitality and lifesteal. The constant purge will prevent enemies from being able to control Huskar with disables, and if they save their magical nukes for you, you can simply use Fate's Edict on yourself.


Oracle doesn't have to be the only defensive support on a team. Generally any defensive support, or heroes with a burst heal works amazingly well with Oracle, as they can both work together to protect a carry or eachother. Heals synergise well with False Promise, and Oracle is far less likely to get picked off with somebody else to watch his back.



Ancient Apparition is also a great partner, namely for the excellent combination of Ice Blast and Purifying Flames. As long as an enemy is frostbitten you can use this as much as you like, they will take the full burst but recover no health until the duration wears off. Their abilities both synergise very nicely in other ways, as Oracle can use his high range and BAT to abuse Chilling Touch, increase his nuke damage with Ice Vortex, and Cold Feet and Fortune's End are easily combined.



Fate's Edict will increase Pure Damage by 50%, making it a good spell to use in conjunction with heroes like Timbersaw, as well as Bane, Tinker, and Lina with Aghanim's Scepter.

Foes

Silence! Oracle is very reliant on casting spells, some in quick succession, making silence a big annoyance for him and one of the most reliable ways of dealing with him. This makes picking up items like Eul's Scepter of Divinity all the more crucial. Heroes like Clinkz, Storm Spirit and Bounty Hunter who may build Orchid Malevolence are also annoying as they can wrap around unseen and pick you off from the back of your team. You aren't useless without your spells due to your range and BAT, but you will need them if you are being focused yourself, or you are dead meat. If you are already affected by False Promise then you are safe from silence, but still watch out for Smokescreen and Static Storm because they will keep you permanently silenced regardless.



Ancient Apparition whilst a great friend is also a great foe. If an ally is afflicted with the ice blast debuff when False Promise ends, they take all the damage and none of the healing, which can usually be enough to kill the teammate you thought was safe. And much like with Culling Blade, an enemy with False Promise can die instantly to frost bite if their health is under the threshold. Axe's Culling Blade will chop straight through False Promise as long as the target's hp is under the damage threshold, leaving them vulnerable for 9 whole seconds when they might otherwise get healed.



False Promise is a continuous strong dispel, but not on everything. Some heroes have abilities that will ruin a heroes usefulness during False Promise, either by delaying it or reducing their damage output during the buff. Bane's Enfeeble and Razor's Static Link will persist throughout False Promise, and AoE effects like Song of the Siren and Chronosphere will ignore the ability and take the hero out of the fight.

Food

Six seconds is a long time to be disarmed so any carry that relies mostly on their right clicks to perform is going to hate getting slapped with Fate's Edict in every fight. Save it for them every fight and you will either make them useless, or force them to get Black King Bar.



Anyone who hates the purge from Fortune's End, namely Omniknight. The AoE purge will make light work of a team buffed with Guardian Angel. Fortune's End is also capable of purging Repel - it cannot be targeted directly at repelled enemies but if an enemy is repelled whilst it is being channeled then the projectile will still hit, and repelled units who get caught in the AoE targeted on another unit will lose the buff themself.

Tips and Tricks

Some miscellaneous info to remember when playing Oracle

• Purifying Flames can be cast after Fortune's End and hit before the purge projectile lands, if timed correctly (if you are two close to the target the purge will hit first and you will heal the enemy). This is less reliable than doing it the other way round but more efficient.
  
  
• Purifying Flames can be cast on non hero units, use it to control lane equilibrium or farm faster.
  
  
• Fortune's End can be targeted on cycloned enemies and also purge the buff, even though they are usually invulnerable. Use this to cancel enemy Cyclones from Eul's Scepter of Divinity, or combine with your own Eul's Scepter to lift an enemy in the air then channel Fortune's End so they are snared for the full duration when they land. This can be combined with two different casts of Purifying Flames for alot of damage and disable time on solo enemies. Banishes from Astral Imprisonment and Disruption will also not interrupt its channel, so low level versions of these skills combo with it well.
  
  
• Although Ancient Apparation is a good counter to Oracle, you can also use Purifying Flames to deny low health allies who would otherwise die from frostbite.
  
  
• The disarm of Fortune's End cannot be purged by conventional purges, only magic immunity will remove it.
  
  
• Urn of Shadows when used on enemies will deal pure damage, you can use Fate's Edict to increase this damage for at least 3 seconds.
  
  
• Fate's Edict can be used on creeps and siege units. Use it to assist in pushes or provide a bit of lane control by disarming allied or enemy ranged creeps, or potentially save a low health tower from a fatal siege creep.
  
  
• False Promise cannot be cast on creeps, but it can be cast on illusions, delaying damage. This combination can be used to send illusions into enemy territory and trick enemies into thinking they've caught the real hero off-guard.
  

Updates / Changes

6.84 (1 May 2015)

Purifying Flames mana cost reduced from 55/70/85/100 to 50/60/70/80
Purifying Flames cooldown reduced from 3 to 2.5
Purifying Flames can now target non-hero units
False Promise no longer makes the target invisible
False Promise now continuously removes debuffs and disables, instead of only when first cast
False Promise duration from 7/8/9 to 6/7/8
False Promise cooldown from 20 to 80/60/40

Despite already being a strong ability, Purifying Flames was buffed to cost less mana, and have a lower cooldown, but still deals the same amount of damage and healing. This increases Oracle's healing and damage output by a significant amount, and allows him to put multiple stacks of Purifying Flames with Fate's Edict on allies earlier. It also makes it a realistic strategy to hit enemies with Flames twice before then purging the healing with Fortune's End.

False Promise received a rework, removing the invisibility component, reducing the duration, and increasing the cooldown drastically to 80 at level 1, and 40 at level 2. Overall this makes False Promise far less spammable, and choosing the right time to use it is extremely important. The invisibility has been removed, but in place False Promise now continously purges debuffs, comparable to Dark Pact's purge but for 6-8 seconds. This makes allies affected by False Promise able to simply ignore most attempts the enemy team will make to control them, giving them free reign to act as they please for the duration.

Eul's Scepter of Divinity received no changes to its bonuses, but had its mana cost increased to 175. Could be considered a nerf to Oracle, but since he will be using his ultimate less it doesn't impact his mana efficiency that much. A good amount of new and useful items for supports were also introduced, giving Oracle some choices for utility.

Overall Oracle himself is now far less survivable since he cannot give himself 9 seconds of invisibility and still have it off CD in time to buff an ally, and is now more reliant on buffing a carry with False Promise who can then fight almost uninhibited for a good duration. In return however he has received extra nuking power, shifting his role to a more offensive support than before.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Oracle is a versatile hero that can support any line-up to great effect. He requires knowledge and practice to confidently use, but once that is gained he is alot of fun and has alot to provide his team.

(This guide is a WiP, comments and tips appreciated.)

V2: Added information about Blademail and Culling Blade in relation to False Promise. Mechanics like this might change upon release, so take them with a punch of salt for now.

V3: Oracle officially released to Test Client. Mechanics such as Blademail and Euls in regards to final False Promise damage were different so references that have been removed.

V4: Oracle has been released for a while now, with a few changes before release. Added a tips and tricks section, additions appreciated!

V5: Some small updates. For a more in-depth look at his playstyle and the numbers on his burst and heal combinations, check out Sando's Guide.

V6: 6.84

V7: A few updates.