A rising hero in the meta
Image from loading screen
When you think of offlane heroes, you probably think of strength heroes. Well this post isn’t about a strength hero, it’s about an agility hero! Your favorite type of offlane teammate, the one who builds like a carry because their primary attribute is agility.
The hero? You may have guessed it based on the image. It’s Venomancer! This hero has been one of the strongest offlane heroes you can pick in your pubs since the Outlanders update was released.
At the time of this writing, he’s sitting at a 52.38% win rate with an 8.26% pick rate in the Divine/Immortal bracket on the Dotabuff meta page.
In this post, we’ll talk about why he’s so good and popular playstyles.
Hero match ups VS Venomancer
One of the reasons Venomancer is doing well is because he’s strong against more popular meta heroes and weak against unpopular heroes.
In the best versus section, heroes in this list include Tiny, Clockwerk, Templar Assassin, Doom, Ember Spirit, Ursa, Keeper of the Light, and Riki. How often have you seen one of these heroes in your games? I’m guessing pretty often.
Whereas in his worst versus section, heroes in this list include Broodmother, Arc Warden, Dark Seer, Terrorblade, Sniper, and Medusa. These heroes aren’t picked often in the average pub game.
Itemization
Venomancer is one of the most versatile heroes out there. There may be a few items that are popular on the hero but there isn’t any item you would say is a must build.
In the past month according to his hero page, the top five most purchased items on Venomancer (not including Magic Wand and non-Guardian Greeves boots) were:
- Veil of Discord
- Aghanim’s Scepter
- Force Staff
- Spirit Vessel
- Guardian Greeves
This doesn’t tell the whole story though because there are 19 different items being built on Venomancer with over 100,000 games. There is a lot more variety in Venomancer’s build compared to a hero like Enigma where only 5 items are purchased in more than 100,000 games.
My personal favorite build that I found works well is rushing Aghanim’s Scepter. If you can get an Aghanim’s Scepter before 20 minutes, that makes it very hard for the enemy to team fight against you because the damage output is too high. With this build, you can just walk into the middle of a fight, use your ultimate, take your hands off the keyboard, and watch as your team chases the enemy down.
Build style
In the builds page, the skill build with the highest win rate and the most popular build both focus on maxing Poison Sting by level 7. In the 7.23 patch, a new effect to Poison Sting was added: it now applies HP regeneration reduction.
This is quite a large addition. Poison Sting is now one of the most powerful lane harassment spells in the game on a hero who was already great at lane harassment. HP regeneration is hugely important in the early laneing phase. The spell only requires auto-attacks as well so you don’t even lose mana when applying Poison Sting.
The rest of the build focuses on maximizing Plague Wards. The most popular build gets Poison Nova at level 6 but the highest win rate build gets it at level 8. Venomous Gale is skipped entirely other than one point at level 2. This makes sense, considering Poison Sting is now the more impactful spell.
Talents
Talent-wise, people generally agree on which route to take.
At level 10, 74% take +90 GPM and 26% take -8 Venomous Gale CD. Surprisingly though, -8 Venomous Gale CD wins 1.1% more often.
At level 15, 77.4% take Gale Hero Impact Summons 2 Wards and 22.6% take -12% Poison Sting Slow. The more popular choice only wins 0.7% more often.
At level 20, 74% take +7 second Poison Nova Duration and 26% take 15% Spell Lifesteal. 15% Spell Lifesteal wins 3.2% more games though.
At level 25, 63.5% take 3x Plague Ward HP/Damage and 36.5% take +800 Poison Nova AoE. The more popular choice wins 1.4% more often.
Final thoughts
The alien banana man is one of the easier heroes to play and one that’s pretty fun. One of my favorite Dota 2 moves is to initiate a fight by absorbing as much attention and damage as possible and then dying for my team. This is something Venomancer excels at especially if you can land a good ultimate.
Do you guys enjoy playing with/against Venomancer? Anyone have any tips or insights in their games with Venomancer? What do you think about the new effect on Poison Sting?
First!
Venomancer
17 days ago
126
38.89%
2.04
nice stats author XD
There are 20 heroes who have a higher win rate than Veno in Divine/Immortal bracket ... Can anybody write stupid shit on this forum nowadays?
someone please give this @ReHa kid attention :( wahhhhhhhh
@Acct Buyer he doesn't understand the word 'rising' :)
hope you like last pick pl
Usually I ignore or mildly remind it but...
Laneing
Across multiple post. I understand that english isn't everyone second or even third language but... a single spell checker (or just copy-paste it to ms words) will do wonders
Slither already did this years ago. Took long time for Icefrog apply health degen debuff.
Kung fu panda super easy counter to poison snake
writer is ancient shit
dude, you mentioned him playing as offlane, why give heroes that are normally played in mid as the prime example of "good heroes against him".
there are literally meta (safelane) heroes that are getting picked that are also good against veno, such as slark, pl, (lc)and the like -- heroes that doesn't care about his gale/slow.
лови кислого
@Inchan because the point he's making is that these heroes arent in meta atm so he's a lot better to pick than before? And Think of it this way, he counters 8 popular heroes and only gets countered by 2 heroes that your other team mates can pick counters for. I think that's pretty decent. You could always also ban pl and slark before picking. Idk about your region but I don't see those carries in every game.
My only gripe with this article is that I would've preffered more of an indepth analysis. The writing style is just a bit off/casual compared to other ones.
Says an author with 126 games 38% winrate on veno. Veno is not a very simple hero to control.
@Icey now that's a nice point. Everyone can access the meta tab in dotabuff so this kind of analysis is less valuable, even if you change your writing style.
привет дебилы
Yes this author has no clue
@Icey he literally mentioned: “One of the reasons Venomancer is doing well is because he’s strong against more popular meta heroes and weak against unpopular heroes.”
Plus i only mentioned few counters but there are more; regardless of how few or many these counters are, veno will MOST LIKELY be picked first before a core (1/2/3), hence, he will be countered most of the times.
Let’s say for some reason all cores was picked before enemy team pick veno, even supports can counter him (e.g. Abaddon).
Lane dominance is what makes veno strong, what helps him dominate a lane? His gale, not his sting nor ward, but GALE.
If he can’t win his lane, he’ll have hard time scaling into the late game.
i have been spamming veno since before outlanders, as an offlane. But i dont feel the damage veil and aghs does for you is enough to carry into late games which usually tends to happen. In my experience veno does not need a single item to boost damage to his spells. He needs to tank up. as an offlane phase boots since you really dont need that much mana for gale. and you need move speed and usually go vs a core with high dmg so the armor helps you alspo when your pos 4 leaves the lane. Then build vessel or pipe b4 finishing vessel, into crimson and then usually one survivability item like force euls or ghost scepter if the game is going to shit. rememebr when you stay alive you do more dmg
Just to flex my star, if I still have it. And fk my eyes, I read this from a 38% win rate Veno player.
Btw why this article seems like it is written by Yongelee in high school?
Pardon, author, and my previous comment above, but his real strengths lies in his wards, which is why the Gale CD + 2 wards Gale talents is very strong paired with ward x3 talent late game.
Not only his wards hamper the victim's regen by applying the passives, it also providing HG visions during a T3 campaign offensive.
All he needs to do is hit Gales to as many hero as he can, preferably with the help of an Aether Lens + Octarine Core, whilst stay alive as long as possible, so he can make as many wards as he can, because you see, his wards is the most durable wards in the game.
By doing so, he provide the important vision his team most needed during the late offensive. And he is already good at defensive with the same manner.