Let's discuss Axe.

Oh boy. Valve loves this hero WAY. TOO. MUCH.

His Q. Literally a smaller AoE RP with a 10 second cooldown. (and slightly less duration). One of the most amazing setups in Dota. Worthy of a teamfight ULTIMATE, if Reverse Polarity did not exist. "Oh thread, but they all have to attack him during this!" Yeah lemme just gain 40 armour and activate Blade Mail. You aint killing him during this.

Battle Hunger. Let me just ahh....Damage you for about 400 and speed myself up real quick. Oh, it can be removed by killing ANYTHING? Good for you. Now let me block your way to the creep wave so you cant kill ****.

And then there's the BEST PART. There's this **********ing thing. Counter Helix. One word. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHH. It's the same thing that seems to happen with Nature's Rat players. If on your team, it's useless and barely does anything. If the enemy has it, IT WILL ABSOLUTELY TEAR YOU DOWN WITH 10 SPINS PER SECOND. It also makes Berserker's Call even WORSE to play against.

Culling Blade. IMHO, it would have been a FINE ability concept. But consider that early on the kill threshold is 250, and most people have about 600-700 hp at that stage, so literally 2 spins will allow you to get a kill. And then Valve looked at Shallow Grave and Borrowed Time. They were like "AXE CAN HAVE COUNTERPLAY? ILLEGAAALLLLLL!".

Axe is in basically EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. I PLAY. My teammates say "high nukes" and "long range" ****s axe. But it's very hard to do these things when you get blinked on and demolished before you have any opportunity to fight. Every 10 seconds Axe can do this again. 12 if you wait for Blink to be back up.

I hate this hero. Especially if he decides to block creep waves with a support like Omniknight. You just can't play evenly against this Character. Then valve gives him an endless supply of immortals and other cosmetics so people play him even more often!

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Why yes, I am mad.

Yeah, Axe is a huge pain in the butt to play against. In my experience, the best way to beat him is to go later than him, to make him irrelevant. His focus is to disrupt your farming time and gank you relentlessly, and teamfight when necessary with a blink dagger.

I've had plenty of games where an enemy Axe dominated us for the first 20-30 minutes of the game, and then our farming Medusa or Phantom Assassin starts beating the **** out of him and he starts to matter less and less.

That doesn't mean he isn't super annoying for the first half of the game, though. I'm honestly surprised that people (and by this I mean the pros/the meta) took this long to realize that Axe was really really strong.

Yeah.... Berserker's Call needs a cooldown nerf. Quite badly. Otherwise the hero is fine, he's meant to be an early game brawler who wants to get a lot done early, before he becomes just a Q and an R. (And utility item to make him do more than just sit there and be tanky and not focused).

He's a great hero, the issue is, Berserker's Call is just too good right now. Give it a respectabe cooldown, and the hero is fair. Still usable in aggresive drafts, but fair.

Like the easiest way to counter play an Axe is to generally to play against him as you would a Batrider, or say a Tidehunter, spread out, and be aware that he will be blinking in your face. (You can also rotate into the jungle if he's not offlaner or you force him out with supports, and gank him, but he's a good offlaner because he can just jungle).

OD or Lifestealer nuff' said.

JK.

Valve has always loved this hero. He's actually a very, very boring one in my opinion. I mean sure, I can wreck the whole enemy team with a little bit of backup, gg wp buy 3 hearts + blademail.

^^ You missed blink.

i don't think that you guys know this, but axe got a huge buff recently, which is why he is picked so often.

the proc chance on counter helix was buffed by 3%,which is huge!

This is like buffing Coupe De Gracè's proc chance by 3 %, it seems like nothing, but the dps increase is amazing.

Axe is really broken, he needs a nerf. First time playing him went 26 - 5

Axe Reks

Calm down axe haters.

Cd might be nerfed to 16 seconds.

And may i say stop complaining, pick viper ursa skywrath and end his misery

Lifestealer is nice against him (you called me but im gonna steal all ur health) but really with good positioning, what can he do? If you stay apart he can't dive you. He jumps 1-2 maybe 3 heroes with good positioning (and wards/map awareness) and then you burst him with magical damage. ez. Well at least thats my logic.
TL;DR Don't group up stay separate = my logic.

Just get a ranged hero and kite him forever, Axe is very vulnerable to heroes like Viper, Drow Ranger, Sniper, especially when he can't jump onto your face because his Blink Dagger cannot be used due to taking damage constantly.

Axe can only do something when he is close to you, Battle Hunger is not that OP as you think, first you need to max Counter Helix to be effective by cutting a lane, while remains vulnerable to ranged harassment. Then, if you max Battle Hunger first you can't cut a lane effectively and it can be easily countered during laning phase (8 creeps every 30 seconds dude), Shadow Word is just millions time better than this. If you max Berserker's Call first you are just a walking Reverse Polarity with no blink and squishy to nukes because you can't get any farm as you didn't max your Counter Helix. Culling Blade? At level 1 it's a 333 damage nuke which grants you guaranteed kill under killing threshold, Laguna Blade/ Finger of Death please.

Axe is similar as Ursa or Sven, not to mentioned Tiny insta-kill most hero with just a blink.