Drafting Snowballing Hard Carries

Seems like snowballer pusher carries will give more success with this patch, since the bounty for towers and barracks are really high now. If you have snowballer heroes, it's better to be able to take objectives afterward instead of having a nebulous advantage that can be lost in the form of a hero death instead of a tower that can never be gotten back.

I think this is why Leshrac is probably the best hero of this patch.

Drow Ranger is surprisingly playable with this update (without Visage!), especially if you combine her with a Viper.

Gyrocopter is also excellent since he's got a good snowbally nature and can push and teamfight early.

As for some of the heroes:

Clinkz is very powerful this patch still, as he can easily take towers as well as become paranoia fuel for enemies. Also a legitimate offlaner.

Slark is still annoying, but doesn't really need to be position 1, you can run your Pos 1 mid, like SF, OD, DK, and have Slark just go hunting once he has a Shadow Blade.

Phantom Assassin got so many indirect nerfs; Buyable Break, Many more armor items, and a lot more caster cores in the meta. Just stay away from her for now, she needs buffs as much as Death Prophet needed them in 6.83

Chaos Knight still farms slowly. A good option is to go cleave by drafting a Magnus, getting Dominator, and stacking ancients in between ganks. As Sanvitch said downtime is still really high, Octarine or Refreshers might be real options.

I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen Spectre at all. Sure, she's weak to deathball, but if the other lineup doesn't really suit that, or you're playing with 4 really strong heroes, she should be able to fit. And if you go any of the number of balling builds, you can create a hell of a lot of problems.

3.6k nearly 7 * one more win pllllsssss*

hmmm i accede your point. i said 90% because of every stream i watch they go 1-4-4-1. naturally that doesnt mean all pro's go that build. so i am biased in that regard because i only know what i have seen.

and actually offlane slark is legit up to and including 5k where i have played an offlane slark 3 times. you can escape any disable you get a very very quick 6 you trade harder then they can. naturally we havent run it in a tourney yet and pos 1 is nearly always where he goes but it is a back up plan. kind of like an offlane weaver.

but hey :P i go 1-4-4-1 nearly every game and have a 62% win rate with a 4 kda on main account and 79% win rate with 6.6 kda on smurf.

In dota, everything is viable.

Insert n0tail voice: Everything can work. AMAZING THIS IS SO SMART, HOW CAN YOU PLAY AGAINST THIS. #neverforgetthedayEGgaveDKmercykappa;_;

(wow it actually looks like i said cyka somewhere in there XD)

Try my slark build
0-3-2-1 and then going on to max 4-4-2-1.
Can take 1 skill point in q if durely needed.
I generally offlane slark,and build drums aquila shadowblade on him

I feel that if the safelane supports commit to laning slark out, they can easily prevent slark from getting anything out of the lane. I saw this one game recently where slark was put in offlane in one game, but was zoned out so bad that he was still level 1 at 3min. I mean sure he has escapes and can't die, but he is still lvl 1 with absolutely no farm at all while the enemy carry was completely freefarming the lane

That lane would only work against weak-supports, and supports who have non instant disables. If that.

Like, you can't trade right-clicks well with a support till level 3 at least, going 1-1-1 (Because you'll almost always want to put a point in Q and W before E in an offlane situation for safety's sake. Hell, even in offensive situations those two skills are arguably better). Since most supports are ranged, and thus can and will kite you as they harrass, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

Which means you probably get harassed out of expierence range, and thus don't get to a fast level 6, and become a liability because you can't exactly do much when level starved.

I think there will be laning situations where it can work, but I think those are few and far between, and thus I don't think it's thaaat viable.

I also don't see why you wouldn't go 4-4-1-2 by level 11. Okay, maybe 3-4-2-2 if you are skirmishing a lot, and thus really want the 30s stack time. Like, the thing about Maxing Q is that Q is your flash farming ability. Sure, Slark wants to snowball and farm heroes, but he still has the ability to flash farm, which a lot of snowballing carries would die for. Which means even in low kill games you can maintain a high amout of gold relative to what other snowballers would have.

As well as just making ganks easier, because 500 burst is a lot better than 275 with some slightly harder right clicks.

Always remember with "snowballing" carries that they need XP probably just as much as they need farm - so you have to be careful about how you lane them. With two supports in a fairly passive trilane doesn't necessarily get you what you need - and it's not like you want a Hand of Midas to cover that.

Generally you want to grab a few early kills and have them doing some solo time while the supports roam. This is one of the reasons you have to be careful with them - if they end up underlevelled compared to mid, it's questionable how well they can snowball.

Tiny + Io still strong :) They can farm, gank AND push. So good.

I kind of include Faceless Void to the list of snowballing hard carries, just like Chaos Knight. Whenever you have your ult and one or two items, you can pick people off.