Aghanim's Scepter Tier List
Over the last year more and more Aghanim’s upgrades have appeared in the game and it can get tricky to keep track of all of them. More importantly, evaluating them is intimidatingly tricky with a game as complex as Dota. Not all Scepter Ugrades are equally important—some of them are almost mandatory, while some offer very little and can even be downright detrimental to the natural progression of the hero.
This Tier List is designed to highlight the relative strengths of the upgrades taking into account the opportunity cost of an item slot and 4200 gold. Some of the upgrades are in fact much stronger than they would appear in the tier list, however in a real-world scenario there will usually be better alternatives. The most interesting and the more controversial tier placements will be discussed in greater detail.
Tier 1—consistently game-changing
Invoker, 
Keeper of the Light, 
Meepo, 
Mirana, 
Night Stalker, 
Pudge, 
Tiny, 
Windranger
Most of the upgrades in this tier require no explanation—the vision granted with upgrades for both Keeper of the Light and Night Stalker is a huge game-changer. The latter is slightly better in terms of providing said vision on-demand, the former has an added strong burst heal.
Pudge has been slowly buffed from patch to patch to a point where he was even deemed a TI-worthy hero by the champions themselves. Granted, it didn’t quite work out as planned, but the upgrade itself is definitely game-changing—it turns an unreliable initiation tool on a 12s cooldown into a similarly unreliable initiation tool, but on a 4s cooldown.
For Tiny it gets slightly more complicated—there is a working build for the hero which doesn’t involve flash-farming, but rather concentrates on constant ganking and pick-offs. Regardless, however, at some point the upgrade will come in handy—it increases the nuke burst of the hero and, more importantly, makes him a very scary objective-taking machine. With enough AS buffs from teammates or items, Tiny can easily take down anything even through the backdoor protection.
Tier 2—consistently strong or situationally game-changing
Ancient Apparition, 
Batrider, 
Chen, 
Clockwerk, 
Disruptor, 
Drow Ranger, 
Enchantress, 
Lina, 
Necrophos, 
Nyx Assassin, 
Pugna, 
Sand King, 
Rubick, 
Shadow Demon, 
Shadow Shaman, 
Timbersaw, 
Tinker, 
Treant Protector, 
Ursa, 
Venomancer, 
Visage, 
Witch Doctor
The most controversial upgrade in this tier is the Batrider one—heroes are frequently spread out enough for it to usually have no effect. However, an often underlooked part of the upgrade is the fact that it allows Batrider to grab enemies who have a 
Linken's Sphere by targeting a nearby creep. This, on top of potential multi-hero Lassos make it a very worthwhile purchase, especially given how it fits the natural requirements of the hero for some extra survivability and mana.
Necrophos’ upgrade could potentially be in a tier higher, however with so many options available, some of them will frequently be superior to the upgrade. Or at least have higher priority in timings—
Octarine Core, 
Shiva's Guard, 
Scythe of Vyse can all be more necessary at a given time, compared to the ability to delete the hero from the game. More importantly, with a heavy focus on defensive supports, the ultimate itself becomes rather unreliable—
Glimmer Cape or Shadow Demon’s Disruption, as well as several other abilities, can render the Reaper’s Scythe almost useless.
Drow Ranger is a weird one, since it is consistently weak, frequently tampering with the natural damage-dealing progression of the hero. It can be situationally game-changing though. In a game where you are facing a push with a lot of summoned units and/or illusions heroes the 
Mjollnir+Aghs build is the absolute best option. In other games, going for stats, survivability and mobility is generally a better alternative.
Tier 3—consistently mediocre or situationally strong
Abaddon, 
Centaur Warrunner, 
Dark Seer, 
Dazzle, 
Doom, 
Earth Spirit, 
Elder Titan, 
Faceless Void, 
Jakiro, 
Legion Commander, 
Naga Siren, 
Nature's Prophet, 
Ogre Magi, 
Omniknight, 
Oracle, 
Puck, 
Queen of Pain, 
Razor, 
Shadow Fiend, 
Skywrath Mage, 
Storm Spirit, 
Techies, 
Undying, 
Vengeful Spirit, 
Viper, 
Weaver
Abaddon and Centaur ultimates fall into roughly the same category—they are a very strong damage-mitigation tools. The problem is, it only works when your team has enough damage themselves, to actually use this extra time. Otherwise, it will quickly turn into a scenario where your team still dies, but in a much slower, more painful way. With some glass-cannons in your lineup, however, these upgrades truly shine.
Legion Commander’s upgrade, with the most recent rework, can actually be very strong. The hero excels in 1v1 scenarios, with potential high damage and a strong passive lifesteal. With the upgrade, she can jump in and focus down almost any target, given her early game wasn’t completely awful. It will either force the enemy to commit disables on the LC or, alternatively, start the engagement as 4v5. Either way, the team with the initiating Legion Commander will likely have a better starting position. It is still very situational, since you need to be sure LC will be able to actually kill the target, but when it works, it works really well.
Storm Spirit is another controversial choice for the third tier, but very much like with Batrider it is the ability to ignore an enemy’s Linken’s what takes the cake. Sometimes it is necessary and can have a high impact on the game. The reason it is a tier lower, however, is because the Aghanim’s Scepter itself doesn’t really fit all too well in Storm’s items—extra mana and health are nice, but it is mana regeneration, damage and disables what Storm is usually after.
Tier 4—consistently weak or situationally mediocre
Axe, 
Bane, 
Beastmaster, 
Bloodseeker, 
Brewmaster, 
Bristleback, 
Crystal Maiden, 
Earthshaker, 
Huskar, 
Juggernaut, 
Leshrac, 
Lich, 
Lion, 
Warlock, 
Magnus, 
Phoenix
On paper both Lich and Warlock upgrades seem incredibly strong, but for the most part both of these abilities should be used as BKB-piercing interrupts, rather than for direct damage. In the later stages of the game, both the extra golem and “infinite” Chain Frost jumps become quite inconsequential, while the ability to interrupt an enemy Black Hole, for example, becomes a lot more important. In either case, there are sometimes better alternatives. In fact, in case of Warlock, Necronomicon II (roughly the same price as Aghs) will offer a significantly higher DPS as well as strong auras and mana burn abilities.
The Juggernaut upgrade fell strongly out of favor ever since the hero was buffed with reduced BAT, which allowed him to scale much better and become a decent hard-carry in the late-game. It can still be ok-ish in certain scenarios, but for the most part the farming-right-clicking Juggernaut is currently much stronger. As such, the Scepter is rarely worth a slot.
Leshrac is roughly in the same boat as Necrophos—there are just too many other items which will work better in the majority of scenarios. A 500 gold more expensive Shiva’s Guard will offer roughly the same benefits in terms of damage against squishier targets, who Leshrac should prey on anyways. It will also immensely boost the hero’s survivability as well as provide a very strong aura and AoE slow on-demand.
Phoenix is an interesting one, but it is too gimmicky to work too well. It can be very useful coupled with certain heroes, such as Terrorblade, Undying or even Invoker, but will frequently fall into the “win-more” category. Refreshing abilities on the hero is nice, but in the meantime your team will have to fight 3v5 and you will risk losing both your Phoenix and the hero inside the Supernova.
Tier 5—inconsequential or situationally weak
Enigma, 
Kunkka, 
Lone Druid, 
Luna, 
Morphling, [missing hero: outworld-devourer], 
Silencer, 
Spirit Breaker, 
Tidehunter, 
Tusk, 
Winter Wyvern, 
Wraith King, 
Zeus
Most of the upgrades in this tier are just straight-up weak. They are inconsequential, gimmicky and rarely worth the price. Three of them however, are a question of opportunity cost and slot-efficiency.
Enigma’s upgrade is a great late-game addition. The problem is, between the usual Mekansms, Black-King-Bars, Blinks and Refreshers, there is rarely a slot for this item. All of the previous items, with the exception of maybe Mekansm are non-negotiable—you absolutely need them as Enigma in 99% of the games. And you need them as fast as possible. If later in the game there is an opening for an Aghs upgrade and Shiva’s Guard is already built or a better fit for a teammate—go for the upgrade, otherwise sticking with the regular path is a more consistent alternative.
Luna and Morphling upgrades, on the other hand, are quite strong in a vacuum. The problem is, they are quite bad on the heroes themselves—when played as cores, both of these heroes should opt for stats, damage or survivability items, which are more cost-efficient.
On the other hand, an offlane or support Morphling, who managed to get their hands on the upgrade, is actually not too bad in certain situations. It requires very specific line-ups, but can work very well in the later stages of the game.
Luna can also be ok with an Aghs if your team has a farming mid. As an off-carry, there might be a way for her to squeeze in this upgrade. It works especially well with mobile teammates, since they can jump in with the Eclipse cast on them, obliterating the enemy team, while staying relatively safe. The concept is definitely worth exploring, but as of now, there hasn’t been a successful lineup with and Aghs Luna.
Tier 6—Alchemist’s Gifts
Alchemist, 
Gyrocopter, 
Lifestealer, 
Sven
Three of these upgrades are a joke—they offer almost no value and are probably the last priority even when gifted by an Alchemist. Gyrocopter and Lifestealer ones are almost completely useless, aside from some cheesy shenanigans which only work in lower-MMR games. The Sven one is good when built on a support Sven. The support Sven himself, however, is pretty bad—he can be a situational fit vs. Death Prophet, but otherwise the hero should always be played as a core.
To be clear—gifting yourself an Aghs is usually the last priority, hence the upgrade is in the 6th Tier, but the Alchemist upgrade concept, overall, is actually quite strong. It allows your supports to have a sudden power spike and in certain cases even completely change the flow of the team-fights. Heroes like Disruptor and Shadow Demon can suddenly become the destroyers of the enemy cores, while Invoker or Tiny can greatly benefit from an extra item slot. In this sense, this upgrade can be consistently strong or situationally game-changing.
Closing Thoughts
Currently, 89 heroes have an Aghanim's Scepter upgrade and the figure will most likely keep on rising. Moreover, it is quite probable that some of the weaker ones will get buffed or reworked, since they simply never have an impact on the game. With the next update scheduled for fall, there is still quite a bit of time to play with the current iterations though.
Which upgrades do you think were misplaced in the tier list? Share your own experience with the community—there is always a lot of room for discussion when it comes to Dota.
1st. wohoo
2nd yey
3rd :\
Why is weaver that high, his upgrade slightly reduces his survivability. It's useful a great upgrade, but just doesn't fit how weaver is played.
4th :(
I didn't even get a medal :(
My worst aghs purchase was for Axe. Just utterly useless.
Luna aghs deserves more respect I think. It makes her ulty stupidly good and unless there's plenty of magic immunity/resist on the enemy team it's really not a bad choice. OD and Magnus are really bad I think and should be a tier lower.
Your agahs point of view of SOO many agahs are extremly wrong.
bat's is rather garbage.
Centaure, doom and techies's are definitly WAY better than bat's. The problem being rather that those heroes are either a bit weak, and/or very wrongly played, nothing to link to their agahs.
Techies's one is even probably even better than pudge's.
Enigma's is at least tier3, lich's tier 5, zeus's tier 6 (even gyro or sven's agahs are way better than zeus') Morph's tier 3 or 4. Earth spirit's is tier1 or tier2 definitly.
Lc's is among the worst of all, waaaaaaay to situational.
Luna's is situationally awesome (like with ns or kotl for example), mediocre the rest of the time.
Jugg's agah is in the class of alchemist gift, a single dps item being stronger than agahs, same for zeus.
Wl's agahs is by no mean weak
Tuskar's is definitly tier3, especially considering last buff to cd/damage
I don't even know why we don't have a tier7, specially designed for od's agahs, as it's the only agahs in the game, that actually reduce the power of an ultimate. Not even alchemist should gift that
why is qop ags this low ? it gives her stats she needs to be less squishy and the cooldown reduction is insane
Qop's agahs is garbage. Her ult's cd is already low enough. Conceptually it's like a zeus agahs, but is worse, since qop can scale pretty well in lategame assuming a carry/semi carry build. (but at least a qop who is being very behind can consider getting this item, while zeus should NEVER ever hence its higher rank).
"Gyrocopter and Lifestealer ones are almost completely useless, aside from some cheesy shenanigans which only work in lower-MMR games."
Tell that to bulldog's stream, he wins his ranked games with aghs on gyro lul
her ult cd ist 135 seconds and with ags it´s 40. How is 135 seconds low enough ?
I like aghs on Zeus.
Either you have a full 40-60 secondes cd ultimate team. and yeah that's too long (but those team suck anyway)
OR you have an other hero with an average cd of 110-130, and in this case you don't need the cd reduction. It's not even mentionning if you have LONG cd, like 160 in your team.
The 40 sec cd ult is usefull usually only if you can use that spell to farm creep. Sadly it's not 30 sec, nor does qop have the mana to spam it, unless you go heavily on some magic build (like shiva hex refresher), which SUCK. At least a dagon / eb build give you the opportuniy to burst people (if you want a magic build).
That cd could be 80s instead of 40s, that would be exactly the same. Except, you would not be defending that item.
Huskar aghs is quite powerful... A 66% nuke with 4 second cd is one hell of a burst especially with the tank heavy game we have today... But I do also know that the item slots do fill up very fast and it isnt a high priority item, but in some games against really fat targets it is required.
Yeah, huskar's agahs, is in an awfull position (like bristle). It's kind of hard to place that item, considering how you are forced to play the hero. It's strong in itself, but most of time the hero cann't affoard to buy it, cause he'll lack too much of something else, like tanking.
This post was shit, they just based on the popularity of the item. They should maybe look at the winrate but not popularity! C'mon Dotabuff you are better than this.
WL aghanims is deffinetely tier 2 but not lower. Luna and WK are situationally strong. Beastmaster is not tier 3 but tier 5
Are you serious? Alchemist giving an aghmin to Sven is great. It increases your team's DPS by such a large amount. Imagine what would happen if sven uses an aghamin ulti on tiny, or drow(they have very high base damage).
Pudge tier 1...
ok lol dude.
its maybe EXELENT 4S GRAB
but pudge need items before taking aganim, and not rush it. maybe late game situational, since you need boots, blink, lens (i like it), force staff/blademail/pipe/shiva/heart and etc...
instead of EVERYONE ELSE on tier 1 that need to rush ag to be useful.
Necro should always be tier 1 of the impact it does. U kill the core and he has no bb so ez win. Do the math first article writer. U fucked up with the tier lists some aghs dont have the right place they belong.
I like enigma's aghs, it is insanely pleasing to see the HP
of the tanky cores drop nearly as of the support's HP.
sf, qop, and techies aghs in the same tier as storm, lc, and skywrath aghs 4 fucking Head
Give Riki and spectre agha . . .
There's no way in the universe that Warlock Aghanim's is tier 4, is basically the only item you buy with him aside from some mobility and refresher. Also Pugna should be tier 1 and Legion tier 6. And Enigma with Aghanim's and Refresher can solo team wipe the enemy team so it should be at least tier 3. Techies is basically mandatory and Sven is really good if you have others right-clickers since that is his main damage source and will basically melt the enemies if paired correctly. Ogre Magi should be tier 2 cause is massive damage with technically no mana requirements. I would also put Oracle in tier 2, the coldown only gets reduced 1.25 sec but it actually does save lives.
Techies is useless without aghs. I don't think there is a hero other than Meepo where aghs is more required than it is on Techies.
Pudge can easily make do without.
You misused 'former' and 'latter'. It should read "The FORMER is slightly better in terms of providing said vision on-demand, the LATTER has an added strong burst heal.
+25 for grammar Nazis.
warlock aghs is tier 4 while naga aghs is tier 3, haha
nice game knowledge dude
Abaddon Aghs is way more undervalued than you think, guarantees that you get healing if enemies fight into your ult, and is an amazing counter-initiation tool. Say a tide jumps in on your team with ravage, manually use borrowed time and shield your carry. Their stun time will be wasted, trading a 150 second cooldown for a 40 second cooldown.
FINALLY I CAN COMMENT OMFG WHY THE HELL WAS I MUTED FOR A WEEK WTF, YOU CANT EVEN JOKE HERE???
Brew is good but hard to play
And why pudge Tier one and clock not if it's bec the low cd?
Techies is a Tier 1 Aghs for sure. Not sure why it's that low.
All hero must be upgradable by aghanims.
Pudge's placement doesn't really fit with the rest of the T1s. Pudge wants to buy lots of other items (aether lens, pipe, force, blademail, heart even) first and it's good but not that big of a deal.
It's also quite amusing that Warlock aghs is listed as being worse than necro 3. The golems do aoe pure damage, which is typically way better than what the necro units provide. They also are much tankier.
Agh is great for cm and lion, for treant and witch doctor is essential as well
lmao this is probably THE worst article ive seen that is posted by dotabuff
Luna's ult gets a huge upgrade from the scepter - it's just that spending 4200 gold and an item slot on a rather tempo-focused hero with such good right click-focused skills is a waste. For that much gold, you could almost buy a manta style. Or you could upgrade your HotD to Satanic. That's 175 gold short of a hurricane pike, which gives the same Int, +5 Strength (so a net -75 HP), +10 agi, +140 attack range, and an active that, if nothing else, lets you traverse cliffs. 4200 gold on Luna is Sange & Yasha, a Moon Shard, a BKB, hell even a Diffusal 2 - the single most gold efficient Agi item outside of components like blade of alacrity. Hell, you could get 2 ultimate orbs. Her Aghs just doesn't justify the massive build detour for position 1 Luna.
Magnus aghs w m33p <3
Lifestealer aghs is the biggest joke on Dota
OD was put too high
warlock on tier 4? okay
How am I suppossed to read this, with a white/sandy background?
Ok there are so many wrong here. I would consider spirit breaker's aghs is at least situational. 20 second cooldown. Better cast range. Aoe (yeah it isn't that big but it can be really good situationally). The improved cooldown is the important part. If ur playing a game of long cooldowns with enigma/tide/magnus/naga/doom etc don't bother though. U get it for constant and drawn out fights / ganks and stuff. Just think about a smallish aoe, stupid cast range, bkb piercing stun.
Warlock's is core.
Witch doctor's is up there with the best.
Legion's is damn aweful. It's so bad it often ends up helping the enemy.
Techies is core.
Luna's can be great.
Lion's is excellent if u get enough gold especially with a good set up from enigma/magnus/earth's grand slam
Dark seer's really isn't that good. Highly situational at best.
Batrider's seems great until you actually try it. it's almost always a complete waste.
Phoenix's is pretty good too. Extra hits to kill the egg. Game changing save on occassion. Re-sets cooldowns. The stats are kinda good.
This is just my opinion but I think Aghanim should become a consumable to all. My proposal is, for all hero except Alchemist, it can be consumed but will be given 40% the stats, or even less, or even none at all if it is still too OP. When Alchemist gives it to other heroes, it gets the full stat bonuses but when Alchemist consumes it, he gets 1.20x (or more)the bonuses. Of course, when consumed, they get their skill upgrade,if any.
As mentioned in the post, Aghanim is only good (or is a core item) for very few heroes. Since most of the heroes would go for better items or would never opt for said item, at least those heroes have the option much later on to consume it for an upgrade. This would not be broken because as mentioned, there are items that most heroes would go for, so this is more of an I-have-too-much-gold-with-me type of item, plus, the negative effect of having the decreased bonuses would balance this. Again, this is just my opinion.
Warlock needs to be in tier 1. Tier 2 minimum.
Maybe I'm just shit, but something just feels satisfying about seeing a Kunkka aghs boat drag a team into an easy set-up into other spells
Seriously no one against 1st tier Mirana? Still after it is nerfed by half?
Again, this is by far the worst article by Dotabuff