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Ability Draft - Guide by Mr. Brad Cooper

November 25, 2014 by Mr. Brad Cooper
Comments: 4    |    Views: 11472    |   



Introduction

Hello, folks. Ability Draft is a game mode in Dota 2 that give you freedom to create a hero you desire. In this mode you can combine your 4 skills from 36 regular skills and 12 ultimate skills available. This mode gives you a chance to make either an OP hero or a totally deep sucks hero. It sounds really fun, but once you get wrong ideas about this mode, you will end up crying, hoping that you chose All Pick instead. So through this guide, basically I am trying to deliver a guide on how to be successful at Ability Draft, and get so much fun from it.

P.S.: Ability Draft, as its name, is about drafting abilities for your hero. It means without proper knowledge about Dota 2 heroes’ skills, I can assure you that you will be rendered confused, you will pick wrong skills who can pretty fvck up your allies. So if you are new to Dota 2, seriously, go learn playing several heroes in All Pick mode (Or training against bot :D)

A Briefing About Ability Draft

Before the game starts, you will be given about 60 seconds to cover up all heroes and skills available, and which hero you play. After that 60 seconds the drafting begins, and every one will pick any skills one by one, until all the 10 players get the skills. There are 36 regular skills and 12 ultimate skills available from 12 random heroes, so there will be exactly 6 regular skills and 2 ultimate skills left behind.

This mode has actually been played in Dota 1, so through all the experiences in Dota 1’s Ability Draft, there are several skills combination which very broken (almost impossible to stand up against), and will not be shown up in the latest patch of Dota 2. Several fixes also have been made from the beginning existence of Ability Draft on Dota 2, such as there will be no any Meepo’s skills (once there are Meepo’s skills, and once one player picks his ultimate, you can say the game is over).

Guide on Picking Your Skills

Alright, lets get started with this guide. You already know what is your hero, and what skills are available on the drafting board. Now what?

First, pay attention to the type of your hero and the true potential it can bring.


For example, you get Slark. In normal playing mode, he is a carry/semi-carry guy who loves to hit, hit, and hit everybody on his way. So in this Ability Draft, you are highly recommended to pick some hitting skills that can maximize his potential as a carry. Another example, lets say that you get Crystal Maiden. The beautiful maiden. In any normal playing mode (and with any normal player :p) she is a true support. She has good amount of mana to cast her spells, meanwhile her basic physical damage will only tickle any body. So, clearly, in this Ability Draft you should turn her into spell-caster freak who can burst out high damage at an instant.

But, is it forbidden to change the true type of one hero? Maybe some of you have seen a Phantom Lancer who was glorious by turning into a nuker.

Who says you can’t? But we talk about efficiency here. About maximizing the true potential of your (accidentally) chosen hero. Of course, I also have seen so many carry-should-be heroes who got Godlike spree by casting high damage spells to their enemies. And also I have seen so many should-be-a-support heroes picking up Walrus Punch as their ultimate and still own the game.

This mode doesn’t have boundaries, per se. That’s why I said that you SHOULD turn whoever should be a carry, into a carry. I did not say that you MUST turn them into the type they should be. It is purely situational. If you get a chance to pick some combination skills which can make your Lycan into a true carry, you SHOULD do that. If you get a chance to pick some good disabling + nuking combination skills which can turn your Lion into a Godlike, you SHOULD do that.

But once again, it is purely situational. There are 10 players in the drafting board who are in a race on picking some Godlike-tier skills; so if you don’t get the chance to pick whatever skills you want, pick the other skills. If you still don’t know what skills suit for your hero (meanwhile all the skills that suit on your hero have already been picked by your stupid team mates), just hope the best. :D

Second, pay attention to others’ picks.

Both for your team and enemy team.

Not like other modes, it is quite unfortunate that you can’t communicate with your team while picking your skills. So you have to try to communicate with your team through your picks. Clearly, what you pick can’t be picked by others. So be careful when picking a skill. For example, you get Jakiro and you pick Fury Swipes. Meanwhile, you know that you have Ursa on your team and he is in a good chance of order to pick that skill. And then he gets frustrated because he wants it, and then he chooses Plague Ward instead. Yeah, pretty fvcked up.

And also, this advice goes for the enemy team. You can prevent your enemy from having a Godlike-combo. For example, one of your enemy has already picked Walrus Punch as his ultimate, and once on the drafting order his turn is after yours. If he picks Enchant Totem as his next ability, he will easily One-Hit-Combo your team. So by paying attention to his draft, you can prevent him from having that combo and sacrifice yourself for that reason by picking up Enchant Totem for you.

And, seriously, don’t hope too much on one style of combination.

Because, of course, there are 10 people on the drafting board and it is almost a guarantee that someone would fvck up your plan.

After getting your first experience with Ability Draft mode, you must bring your dream plan for skills combination. But one thing you might not fully prepared is that your plan could be vanished at once and then you might realize that you are not ready for plan B. So, hey, prepare your plan B. Or even plan C to E.

One tips for facing this trouble is to decide which skill is the must-have in your plan. There are several skills which give you almost same result. For example, Drunken Brawler ( Brewmaster), Chaos Strike ( Chaos Knight), or Blade Dance ( Juggernaut) (even they are usually drawn together on the drafting board). All of them give you critical hit, so replacing one after the other is not a problem at all. So, if you already go with a plan in drafting time, choose which skill on your plan that can’t be replaced. For example, after covering up all skills available on the drafting board, you go with a plan: Kraken Shell ( Tidehunter), Blink (Anti Mage), Chaos Strike ( Chaos Knight), and Laguna Blade ( Lina). Then, you realize that Kraken Shell can be substitued by Corrossive Skin ( Viper), Chaos Strike can be replaced by Blade Dance ( Juggernaut), and you can use Finger of Death ( Lion) instead of that Laguna. Meanwhile, there is no either Phantom Assassin, Queen of Pain, or Slark to replace that Blink. So, Blink is a must pick for your plan.

Combos / Skills That You Need To Consider

After you understand the right attitude on picking abilities (with some prays that you can get a good one), now I want to share some serious combos or abilities that can fvck everyone and make your enemy stressful.


Teleportation (Nature Prophet)

This skill is pretty broken. You come out of nowhere, do one or two nuking skills (maybe dagon also :D), and TP out of there. Done. Easy Godlike spree, easy life. One thing to note is that this skill always/should be drawn together with two or three abilities that can deal big damage at an instant.



Rearm (Tinker)

Personally, I hate rat doto. It stress you out, even if you are the one who play the push. But this skill, combined with, of course, Boots of Travel and some other pushing powers (such as Natures Call, Plague Ward, Spawn Spiderlings, or March of Machines), is really powerful to end the game under 30 minutes. And usually somehow some players can get Rearm AND <insert 1 pushing power here> AND <insert 1 other pushing power here> TOGETHER. I don’t know what others think. Busy on being a carry, maybe. :(



Walrus Punch (Tusk)

In the world of hitters, Walrus Punch is the one that you can’t ignore. It has everything: It can slow (40%. WTF), it can’t miss (another WTF), and it deals huge crit (350%. WTF WTF WTF). Even if you get a ranged hero. Plus, if you are lucky, Enchant Totem in your pocket. Bam. GG.



Faceless Void’s Abilities

Don’t raise your hand. I know every one will agree that Void is kinda broken. All of his skills are useful—even if they are on different guy. So when there are Void’s skills set on the drafting board, prepare to see that almost always every one will pick any of his skills. Timewalk? Good for both chasing and escaping. Backtrack? Proc chance 25% is broken for defensive stuff. Time Lock? Proc chance 25% + bonus damage are seriously broken for offensive stuff. Chronosphere? On good hands, it almost guarantee a kill.



Enchant Totem (Earthshaker)

In any Ability Draft game, this skill is 100% guaranteed being picked by any one. What good? It offers you 400% Bonus Damage at instant. That is really ridiculous. What’s the better? It has only 5 seconds cooldown. Holy cow. Combined with abilities like Jinada (Bounty Hunter), Walrus Punch (Tusk), Grow (Tiny), Tidebringer (Kunkka), or God’s Strength (Sven), while having a Daedalus on your pocket, you are literally a GG.


+
Sticky Napalm (Batrider) + Shackle (Shadow Shaman)

This combo is very famous. What are they doing? At maximum level, Sticky Napalm increases 25 damage per stack (up to 10 stack) per instance. Meanwhile, Shackles deals 50 instance with 4 damage per instance. If we do a little math here, that will mean (25+4) + (50+4) + (75+4) + (100+4) + (125+4) + (150+4) + (175+4) + (200+4) + (225+4) + (250+4) + (4x40) = 1575 damage at maximum level! That is insane. If you don’t get Shackle, Ion Shell (Dark Seer) or Rot (Pudge) will do almost the same effect.

At Last.

Finally, after all the guide I have been put you through, all you need to do is doing a lot of fun. This mode has no boundaries of surprises and happiness, because there will be lots, lots, and lots of combination you can do, and you will never know what ability combo that you will get.

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