Dagons and Blade Mails (Keys to Winning)

-The qualifications that make blade mail essential

A.) You're a support character
B.) Your speed is middle to low
C.) You are not an escape character
D.) You are not Nyx

Treant protector is a great example of a character where blade mail is essential.

Even if you are an escape and your role is fuzzy between carry and support like clinkz, the blade mail should definitely not be over looked.

Of how many people who are playing don't actually realize that blade mail is a must?

-Team dagon rush

I mean, especially if you have a lot of intelligence heroes on your team, how can you NOT take this route if your goal is to win?

Even if the team was lacking intelligence heroes, any team that gets a head start on the opponent and starts upgrading their dragons is guaranteed to win... If the other team started coming back then they all must have had amazingly timed blade mail uses or you have gone completely brain dead.


Diablo 3: I would also like to point out how "Reflect Damage" has been a complicated problem for the diablo team.

When elites have reflect damage and you jump in with a heavy blow, you might not even see your death coming. These elites, however, have the reflect damage status on until they die, making it a very unintelligent fight as you really have no choice but to suicide your self or use indirect forms of attack to fight for you.

Blizzard's Answer: In Patch 1.07 which goes live today in about roughly 5-6 hours, the Reflect damage on elites will now turn on and off to make fighting elites a more intelligent battle, but now there will be a very visible indication of whether it is on or off as opposed to before.

Question: Should this reflect damage have a visible activation?

Same question for Dota... Should the reflect damage be visible if it already functions with a short duration and long cool down?


Conclusion: Primary reasons why teams lose is a combination of.....

A.) Key vulerable heroes that get focused and don't make effect use of blade mail.

B.) Team focused burst damage (Dagons, Gaurunteed kills)

I'd add some qualifications to your criteria for buying Blade Mail and especially Dagon.

- Do you have enough HP to make blademail worthwhile? Ultimately they're only going to lose your max HP if they continue attacking you until you're dead, within 4 seconds.

- Do they have abilities which you can telegraph are about to hit you, or heroes with low mobility/range who can't switch targets quickly?

- Do they have a lot of disable or AOE disable which will prevent you activating blademail when you want to? (e.g. Chronosphere or Black Hole)

Dagon

- Is it early enough in the game for the burst damage to be effective?

- Do you have the mana pool to support it?

- Do you have other burst damage abilities which can supplement it?

- Is it the most useful item you can buy for your character for the price?

- Are enemy heroes squishy enough to be quickly nuked down?

BKB will counter the enemy team's 5 dagons, as well as most problems about getting focused.

Blademail does not make you invincible. Even if you have blademail, you will die if people focus you. You will do damage to people attacking you, but you will still die. For example, 5 people use their dagons on you with blade mail. They all take damage, but you die.

Blademail has and should continue to have a visible indication. A squishy carry will kill themself in less than the 4 second duration of blademail, even with full hp.