Favorite Hero Tips and Tricks!

Lone Druid

If offlane pull the enemys first wave of creeps through their jungle up infront of your tier 1 to intercept your second creep wave

Your first creep wave will have quickly died under the enemy tier 1 and thus will push towards you. At the start of the game quickly ask for a set of wards from a support so you can go block the pull camp and provide you vision incase they have a killing lane.

• Use your Spirit Bear to tank enemy creeps if they are pushing too hard with its Stout Shield as you don't want the creep wave going under your tower and thus pushing back in their favor. This is extremely useful if you are playing mid and pretty much no other hero can do this.
• Use your superior combined base damage of both the Lone Druid and the Spirit Bear to out last hit and deny any enemys. This is particularly strong against enemy solo's and you should abuse it as much as possible especially against ranged heros.
• Use the Spirit Bear to pick up runes or deny them while staying in the lane to get xp and last hits. The Spirit Bear can use every rune except DD and illusions. If you pick up an invis instantly Return the Spirit Bear to you during the fade time to set up some easy kills on mid if you have entangle up. Haste is just as good if not better.

Entangle has a 5 second cooldown when procced. When the bear is upgraded or resummoned this cooldown is refreshed

This means you should save your level 7 skill point and as soon as you get an entangle upgrade your Spirit Bear to 4 so you can get another one in quick succession.

Abuse Return on your Spirit Bear as much as possible to dodge auto attacks and stuns. Similarly if you are diving towers level 5+ be sure to return the Spirit Bear to avoid the tower hitting it because it hurts a lot.

Most of the time you will not need to upgrade your True Form until later

After taking 1 point in it, it's advisable to max rabid first because it drastically improves your chasing, fleeing and killing power.

• When transforming as druid you all ranged enemy auto attacks and many projectiles such as single target stuns or stuff like assassinate or heat seeking missles. Abuse this constantly.
• When you are healing switch to druid form to reduce the amount of hp you need to heal. This makes transquils and salves incredibly effective on druid.

Pudge

Pudge Meat Hook grabs heros farther than the actual range indicator (green circle). It means you should generally place your hook about one hero hitbox in front of your target. This is important to abuse for a few reasons,

1. If you need to fire a max range Meat Hook quickly as your walking into position (ie before they finish that last hit, before kotl finishs his channel etc) you will fire it with out taking extra steps/time.
2. Many people are unaware of Pudges max Meat Hook range, and adding that little bit makes it more deceptive.
3. Sometimes it can be the difference in being just in or out the fog of war.

It also makes your Meat Hook look epic because of the extra range.

Timbersaw

For Timbersaw lies in his passive Reactive Armor, which is the most underrated thing about him. Managing your stacks is the key to winning your lane and handling before level 6. In 9/10 matches, you need one point in it. In 1 of those 9, you will need 2. Make sure that your armor is always nice and high by drawing 'just' enough creep aggro to keep your stacks maxed. This makes you even harder to gank.

Nature's Prophet

When you sprout and enemy and you have Treants off cooldown and you have enough mana summon them infront of your enemy and try to block them from running away.

• Save your Wrath of Nature to stop pushes and help out in ganks, teamfights.
• You can easily kill the enemy courrier at 1:30-2 mins when their mid is delivering its bottle and the courier is not upgraded yet, just tp on the stairs between T1 and T2 towers.
• Always try to splitpush, eventually someone has to commit and tp to defend and that's when you either look for ganks or split push the other side of the map.
• If you are playing 1v1 make sure you harass your enemy with treants if you can but make sure you don't feed them. Some micro skills required.

It's just my personal taste but I always carry a Town Portal Scroll, even though you have a global Teleportation skill a scroll can come in handy. Maybe you want to do a quick courrier snipe in the enemy base or you are low hp/mana however, you don't want to put your tp on cooldown because you want to apply pressure somewhere else.

Storm Spirit

Storm Spirit's Static Remnant has flying vision and hits invis units. It can be used for scouting, including into the rosh pit. Ball Lightning does more damage the farther you go. If you're LTTP and the entire enemy team is low and close together, you can grab a multikill from just balling in from as far as you can.

Witchdoctor

If you're supporting with Witch Doctor, try to draw both heroes away from the creep wave before using casket and laugh as neither can move. Later on, if you're caught in the jungle, aggro and ursa or centaur camp before using casket. It works on neutrals and will likely knock your enemy at least twice.

Clockwerk

At level 2 Power Cogs already does twice the health and mana drain that it costs in mana. If you're not having any mana issues in lane, you can use it as sort of a mana burn light.

Kunkka

A level 2 X Marks the Spot immediately followed by a Torrent then Ghost Ship will hit the target 100% of the time for both Torrent and Ghost Ship.

Rubick

Rubick as he is fun to play and very versitile. However, he is very squishy and he is always a prime target for pickers such as Spirit Breaker, Nyx Assassin, Queen of Pain, Templar Assassin etc.

There isn't any good tip I can give about Rubick, as his playstyle is pretty much self explainatory. However, how can you counter the fact that you are so squishy? Well, get mobility instead. I primarily try to steal mobility spells (Blink, Shukuchi ,Spirit Breaker's Charge or Nether Strike etc) when roaming and try to steal a mass ulti or a nuking spell once im in the fight. Having a mobility skill while roaming/warding is very valuable as it prevents from the other team from nuking you.

A bit later in the game I make a Force Staff or go directly for a Blink Dagger. That way, even if dagger is on the 3 sec cooldown you get once hit, I can still make a running attempt using a stolen blink. If that fails, I use Force Staff and by the time I push myself, dagger is off cooldown which serves as a third escape mechanim. Having 3 escape mechanisms virtually makes you unkillable although Rubick is one of the squishiest heroes in dota.

Elder Titan

If you're playing Elder Titan, remember that your aura is broken is fuck. I only get 1 point in Echo Stomp at level 2, then max spirit followed by aura, getting ult whenever possible. Set your spirit to follow an enemy that your team is focusing and they'll melt because they've got a free veil debuff + zero armor on them.

Also, soul ring is ridiculously good on him

He has a lot of HP, and astral spirit is a great distance harrassment/last hitting tool on him, not to mention the spirit boosts your autoattack damage to obscene levels (12 per creep and 40 per hero max level), so you can get easy last hits or harrass, especially against melee heroes. Not to mention it's great in teamfights when you've got some tank/survivability items.

Don't rely too much on echo stomp to set up good ultimates

After a fight breaks out, fire it off when you see your opponents clustered and spells are flying everywhere, especially if you're fighting at a chokepoint. Send your spirit in to boost your ultimate's damage as well. Lastly, firing your ult from almost max distance gives your opponents a lot less time to react to the ground splitting below them.

Visage

With Visage, I see a lot of people letting their Familiars float out in front of them, controlling them all at once. Most players know that the Familiars damage dwindles down to 10 in just a few shots, but still I see people using them for last hits and such. First of all, since the Familiars move faster, they'll end up out front of you if you move all 3 at once, making them susceptible to be killed, feeding them 100 gold each in just 2 quick shots.

What I do is set control groups so that 1 is Visage, 2 is the Familiars, and 3 is all. I have 2 follow 1 so that for 95% of the game my Familiars are just following right behind me fully charged as I use Visage for last hits and such. When a fight starts and I'm targeting someone, I just hit 3 and attack. What's interesting is that when I buy Aghanim's Scepter, it automatically adds the third Familiars to my control group 2... Handy.

In the mid game: Have them follow a high-impact ganking hero on your team

A lot of the time heroes like Batrider, Bounty Hunter, Puck, etc. have enough damage to bring a hero down to ~250 HP, but need a +1 to really guarantee the kill. With your birds, they can easily solo someone in the duration of Flaming Lasso/Jinada slow/Dream Coil. This generates so much space since enemy heroes need to back off as soon as 1 hero is missing off the map (unlike 2 or 3 if you had a different support like Rubick.) You should also consider the birds more disposable than the hero (since the timing of their core items are so important) and use the 3s stun to get them out of a sticky situations, even if it means losing your summons.

Late game: A huge mistake I see is keeping the birds near yourself

You should be flying them over impassable terrain between your team and the enemy (on pushes, this means over trees. During a Rosh standoff, this means over the SE ward cliffs.) Very few units in the game can fly for a reason: Use your birds to find and disrupt Blink Daggers. Casting  Grave Chill a few seconds late won't make or break a teamfight. Disabling a Magnus a few seconds late will. Even if you're bad at this and constantly feed birds (it helps to have vision spells like powershot or shadow poison,) use the stun to disrupt the followup. When Magnus/Earthshaker/Elder Titan lands that perfect, 4-man disable, their team will rush forward. You can single-handedly turn a fight with solid return stuns.

Bloodseeker

For Bloodseeker: Bloodrage works through black king bar if you cast it on yourself and then activate BKB.

The new dispel on Bloodrage also allows it to dispel ghost scepter and ethereal, allowing you to target supports who carry them. Rupture is not dispelled by  Time Lapse or dark pact, making Bloodseeker my go to counter pick against Slark and Weaver.

Bloodseeker can Blood Bath from allies if he denies them, not necessarily useful all the time, but it can be quite useful in teamfights if your ally has a DoT and you need some extra health!

And even though this is a preference, I strongly suggest phase boots over treads on Bloodseeker. The ability to phase is absolutely essential to not get cock blocked and to chase low opponents.

Slark

When running from a fight with Slark, try your best to have your opponent lose vision of you, even if it involves traveling a route that seems less optimal. People really underestimate his bonus movespeed from his ult, even if it only shows up for a second or 2.

When initiating a fight with Slark, save your Q for after your leap. May people will leap and Q, to have the Q's burst hit the enemy hero ASAP. Since his Q is a purge, though, it's better to wait until your opponent is already leashed. People tend to panic when Slark leashes them, and stun as soon as they have a grip on what's happening. If you wait until you're leashed to Q, you'll likely purge whatever slow/stun they place on you.

Slark's Q purges most debuffs including dust, and you can NOT kill yourself with it. If you're running from a fight, be sure to think of your Q as another sort of escape mechanism.

Always get an early level of E in lane with Slark. Each autoattack means that the opponent not only loses some health and you gain agility; It also means that their max HP and max Mana are temporarily decreased by 19 and 13, respectively.

Axe

It has reached the pubs that  Battle Hunger is a pretty mighty spell and is worth maxing over Berserker's Call

But still there aren't many people using that spell right. If you leave your forest to toss a  Battle Hunger (or you are at the lane, whatever), instantly right click the enemy. He either has to choose to stay next to the creep wave to grab a last hit or walk back and eat the  Battle Hunger. Whatever he chooses, if you stay there after tossing the hunger, he will eat HUGE amounts of damage.

Also, while on the lane, always right click enemy heros! That will draw creep aggro on you, resulting in spins. Resulting in Last Hits and Kills!

Sand King

If you have enough levels in  Caustic Finale, you can clear an entire creepwave by Burrowstriking to the Ranged Creep and autoattacking it once.

When you're clearing jungle camps as Sand King, it's helpful to know whether or not some of the creeps will die to a single Burrowstrike. If they will, you should attack them once each beforehand to put the Caustic debuff on them. A good example of this is the medium Satyrs. If you Burrowstrike in first, the two small white Satyrs will die and you'll have to fight the purple ones. If you proc Caustic on the two white ones first, you can clear the entire camp in a Burrowstrike .

If you Sand Storm and someone else Force Staff's you, the sand animation won't follow Sand King, but the damage AOE will

I've found this useful for anticipating teamfights. It obviously works best with a team on voice com. Sand Storm in the trees, have a teammate Force Staff you right into the middle of the lane, and just wait. Creeps will die fast enough to stall the push, and you maintain invis, so if the other team comes up to fight, they'll basically be walking right into a Burrowstrike & Epicenter combo.