Ability Draft v0.3 (unfinished)

Introduction: What is Ability Draft?

Ability draft is a for fun mode of Dota 2 that allows you to draft abilities from 12 random heroes, 10 of these heroes are the ones the players are randomly assigned. Otherwise it is just like normal Dota, you kill the ancient. However it is similar to a random draft where only a set pool of heroes are available for the game to assign to you. No heroes with sub-abilities are in Ability draft, buggy interactions (Ogre Magi), as well as heroes that are plain unfun to draft with. (Meepo anyone?)

Pros / Cons

Pros:

1. Fun Homebrew feeling
2. Outright nonsense happens often
3. Different game experience every time

Cons:

1. No one likes to play/build support (much less waste gold on wards or a donkey)
2. Cult learning curve is high. (must know all abilities and potential interactions)
3. Glitches!

Drafting, Hero Type and Cast Point.

Alright, so you started the draft you are given several moments to look at the pool of 48 skills before the radiant's first hero gets to start picking. But before you look at all those goodies, lets look at your hero. Hero's have different stat gain, casting times, attack times, and so forth.

Is your hero a Strength Hero?

• High durability
• Low mana pool (unless you're undying)
• Potentially very low cast animation
• You are MELEE, unless you're Huskar.

Is your hero an Agility Hero?

• High Armor/Attack Speed
• Mana Pool is usually questionable
• Usually weak to make up for their usual skills (weaver, drow, etc)

Is your hero an Intelligence Hero?

• High Manapool
• Weak in every other respect (Attack speed, HP, etc)
• Can have low attack animations
• Generally have High cast animations

Here is a link to the Dota2 wiki on casting times (it has a full list of course)


-Dota2 Wiki

It is mostly important to remember the following heroes.

Low casting times (easy to chain spells, use escapes, etc)

• Dragon Knight, Sand King, Techies, and Venomancer have 0 cast time.
• Slark and Tiny have 0.001 cast time.
• Ancient Apparition has 0.01 cast time.
• Distruptor has 0.05 cast time.
• Skywrath Mage and Tusk have 0.1 cast time.

High casting times (Harder to chain spells, use escapes, etc)

Casting time of 0.5 seconds list:

• Bane
• Centaur Warrunner
• Clinkz
• Death Prophet
• Mirana
• Nature's Prophet
• Necrophos
• Omniknight
• Razor
• Treant Protector
• Warlock

Even worse then half a second delay:

• Tinker has 0.53 cast time.
• Luna has 0.6 cast time.
• Jakiro and Naga Siren have 0.65 cast time.
• Earthshaker has 0.69 cast time.
• Leshrac has 0.7 cast time.

Special Heroes:

1. Visage, has a base magic resistance of 10%, Beware!
2. Silencer, the intelligence steal is part of this hero!
3. Void, can always move inside a Chronosphere!
4. Nightstalker, the Upgrade for Darkness is part of this hero! (Flying vision!)

Drafting Skills, Panic!

So what should you pick? It depends on the hero you have of course, but as a general rule if you don't know what to go for look for the opposite type of hero (ranged or melee) and grab one of those abilities.

Are you a melee hero?
Would you like to be ranged? Take one of the following skills: Beware this is a late game option. Any of these if you attempt to use them too far away will automatically miss. A monkey king bar will prevent this however. Good for late game nonsense.

1. Frost Arrows (Drow)
2. Searing Arrows (Clinkz)
3. Poison Attack (Viper)
4. Liquid Fire (Jakiro)
5. Impetus (Enchantress)
6. Arcane Orb (Outworld)
7. Take Aim (Sniper)
8. Burning Spears (Huskar)
9. Glaives of Wisdom (Silencer)

Do NOT take the following skills if you are melee:

• Marksmanship, getting this on a melee hero gives you the ability to farm somewhat better. But only if no one is near you, oh right you have to get close to attack them. Only get it if you have a ranged effect that will give you 500+ range.

The castable modifiers allow you to have instant hits at whatever range the original hero's base range was.
Take Aim gives you long range without the mana/missing issue.
These ranged effects do not change that you are a melee hero allowing items like Shields, Orb of Venom, Basher, Vlad's, and so on to work at full power (25% chance to stun at 600 range? yes please). Not to mention that melee heroes are generally more durable and have higher base attack.

Are you a ranged hero?
Look for melee abilities that usually are penalized on range heroes or outright don't exist. Things like Bash, Splash damage, and damage increases.

Consider these abilities on a ranged hero.

1. Tidebringer (This does work, dealing a massive splash damage when it goes off)
2. Grow (Attack speed optional due to range)
3. Walrus Punch (This ensures you hit, a powerful hit)
4. Enchant Totem (This hurts a lot, you tend to only hit once and then back off)
5. Overpower (Pick this over Fury Swipes, it makes you a carry)
6. Fury Swipes (Pick this if you have attack speed!)
7. Time Lock
8. Greater Bash
9. Bash
10. Juxtapose (This easily gets out of control in your favor)
11. Curse of Avernus (Movement speed and Attack speed)
12. Kraken Shell (Free shield that always works)
13. Shapeshift (Haste rune + Free Critical Hit)
14. Elder Dragon Form (Grants +372 range)
15. Shift (Only if your agility, it usually doesn't work well on int heroes)

Do NOT take the following skills if you are ranged:

• Natural Order, it has a radius of 275 which will affect practically no one.
• Degen Aura, it has a radius of 350 which will affect almost no one.

Skill Combos

So this is the real reason you are here, what combos haven't you thought of yet? The above section is a simple rule of thumb, this is where the fun begins.

Abilities you should first pick, these abilities usually combo with anything or allow the team as a whole to have a significant advantage.

• Chemical Rage (A lot of regen, spamable, good for the carry)
• Permanent Invisibility (Costs gold to counter you)
• Thirst (Free Maphack)
• Thundergod's Wrath (Yes it is cheap, but a global team nuke is strong)
• Grow (Increased damage, and transparent hero)
• Tempest Double (This is basically like Divided we Stand except not all the time)

Here are some of the ones you can feasibly build.

• Moon Glaives + Drow Ultimate (Ranged only)
• Charge of Darkness + Skywrath Ulti (Mana Heavy)
• Nightmare + Omnislash (Yes... that does work)
• Tidebringer + Bloodrage/Jinada/Enchant Totem (Get a shadowblade)
• Focus Fire + Any type of bash (Even the skullbasher)
• Focus Fire + Fury Swipes (This does work)
• Take Aim + Shift/Impetus/Grow (or any other boost)
• Aftershock + Low cooldown spells (Arcane Orb, Nasal Goo, Ball Lightning, etc)
• Permanent Invisibility + Any Nuke (Laguna, etc)
• Aftershock + Low cooldown spells (Arcane Orb is best, but Quills/Nasal Goo is Reasonable)
• Essence Aura + Rearm + Long cooldown spell (Tombstone, Netherward, etc)
• Essence Aura + Ball Lightning (Apparently ball lighting is several spells put together)
• Blink + Short range nuke or ultimate (Culling blade, dismember, etc)
• Juxtapose + Mana Burn (antimage or diffusal blade)
• Mirror Image/Phantasm + Mana Burn (Similar to above)
• Enchant Totem + Walrus Punch (17.5 critical Hit, best on ranged)
• Permanent Invisibility + Charge of Darkness (Good roaming support)
• Sacrifice + Purification/Brain Sap (Good Support heal/nuke)
• Shukuchi + AOE Stun/AOE Nuke (Or some useful Ulti like Duel/Culling Blade)
• Shadow Dance + Any Invisibility (Massive heal)
• Rot/Healing + Infest (The rot stays on, but you're invulnerable inside, witch doctor healing wont drain mana either)
• Empowering Haste + Razor Passive (Massive Speed)
• Feral Impulse + Demonic Conversion (or other summoned units)
• Focus Fire + Mana Break (Funny and annoying)
• Tempest Double + Any Stun/Nuke
• Magnetic Field + Duel/Taunt (Afterall, you get evasion)

Special Note: Sticky Napalm (Extra damage 10/15/20/25, stacks 10 times)
This ability combos with the following abilities the best.

Sticky Napalm + Shackles, it does 4 damage every 0.1 seconds for 2.75/3.5/4.25/5 seconds.

Damage output with a level 2 hero per stack. (Magic resist 25%)
I'm not going higher then 5 stacks because there really is no need, nothing has that much hp at 3 minutes in the game.

1. 14*27=378 (283.5)
2. 24*27=648 (486) First Blood range
3. 34*27=918 (688.5)
4. 44*27=1188 (891)
5. 54*27=1458 (1093.5)

Anyways if you get 10 stacks, at level 8 with nothing else you can kill anything (just don't get disabled)

• Max Potential Damage: 254*50 = 12,700 (9525)

Sticky Napalm + Ion Shell, Deals 3/5/7/9 damage in 0.1 second intervals, 200 damage instances. This is able to wipe an entire team if you can hold them still near the affected unit. The only downside is keeping the target near the ion shell, good thing sticky napalm slows.

Damage output with a level 2 hero per stack. (Magic Resist 25%)

1. 13*200=2600 (1950) First Blood range
2. 23*200=4600 (3450)
3. 33*200=6600 (4950)
4. 43*200=8600 (6450)
5. 53*200=10600 (7950)

Both abilities maxed out, with 10 stacks.

• Max Potential Damage: 259*200 = 51,800 (38850)

Sticky Napalm + Rot The double edged ability, except when it does hundreds of damage to your opponent and not to you. Rot deals 7/12/17/22 damage in 0.2 second intervals. I think you understand the idea here, it does crazy damage to opponents and much less to you, throw in something like gravekeepers cloak for some laughs (rot doesnt remove the layers from the cloak).


Special Note: Rearm.
Combos very well with: Nether Ward, Tombstone, Midnight Pulse...
Getting one of those with rearm can outright win games.

• Netherward: Imagine if the enemy casts a nuke, and 3+ wards hit him. You can also use the standard Tinker build of Boots of Travel to place them everywhere on the map, draining mana and punishing any cast.
• Tombstone: You are no longer playing dota, with multiple tombstones up your opponents are playing their favorite zombie survival game. Best part is that the zombies give no gold for being killed. The downside is that if they can tank the zombies, then you are just feeding them a lot of gold for the buildings. Play smart and use it for pushing/team fights.
• Midnight Pulse: It deals what I call "Anti-Heart of Tarrasque" damage, imagine if you had 2 or 3 up during a team fight. Watch the enemy tanks just melt away (and everything else too)

Special Note: Aftershock. A lot of players I've seen go for this ability rather quickly, the problem is it only combos with a small selection of spells.
Combos with: Arcane Orb, Nasal Goo, Quill spray, other low cooldown spells.

• Aftershock + Nasal Goo/Quill spray (preferably both) is the preferred build for this combo, resulting in an AOE minor nuke and perma stun, combined with skills that deal more and more damage.
• Aftershock + Arcane Orb, is the one you don't see often. On a melee hero it is simple, you attack, walk around the enemy once, attack, repeat. The downside is this method is more mana heavy then spamming goo.

Special Note: Arcane Orb. This castable orb effect is a spell for all other purposes except Warpath. (It triggers things like Aftershock, Overload, etc)


Abilities to always watch for combo potential.

• Aftershock, free stun on any cast.
• Essence Aura, makes any hero a caster
• Rearm, any spell with a long cooldown has a reason for that cooldown.
• Grow, Insane damage... just get attack speed or splash.
• Nature's Guise, the ability to cast spells and run around like riki, for anyone.
• Teleportation, one of the ultimate gank skills, Combo's nicely with Powerful nukes.
• Permanent Invisibility, Same as nature's guise but only on you.
• Tempest Double, you get all your spells off cooldown and usable for 20s.

Remember legends of dota where you could pick abilities without worrying anyone would counter you? Those still apply here but are very unlikely.

1. Jinada + Tidebringer + Enchant Totem + Grow/Walrus Punch (One shot the whole enemy team, comes online at level 6, but is stronger mid/late)
2. Overload + Fiery Soul + Quill Spray (ranged hero is best, comes online early/mid game)
3. Sticky Napalm + Aftershock + Dark Pact (The pact deals damage 10/sec, and cannot miss due to the enemy being stunned, comes online mid game)

The New Sceptor abilities.

If you noticed the recent patch (6.68) the ultimate upgrading sceptor now affects a lot of non ultimate abilities. Pay attention and maybe you can get two or more abilities that will upgrade with this item!

• Laser (Tinker)
• Homing Missile (Tinker)
• Nasal Goo (Bristle Back)
• Meat Hook (Pudge)

Glitches.

To be written: List of heroes that do NOT work with ranged effects.

Moon Glaives: Various Melee heroes cannot use this ability, the project simply spins in the air where you attacked.

Elder Dragon Form: Various Melee heroes cannot shoot projectiles as the dragon form, you still 'attack' but the floating globes of acid/fire/ice will hang in the air never hitting anything.

Those abilities above to NOT work with the following heroes.

[*] Pudge
[*] Juggernaut