Dripping venom, I arrive.

Venomancer and Colourr, an Introduction.

Hey there, I'm Colourr and this is my work in progress Venomancer guide. I am my group friend's designated support player, my mains being Witch Doctor, Venomancer, Windrunner and Shadow Shaman. This guide is mainly for pubbing but can be adapted for serious play as it is just a rough guide for some newer Veno players who'd like somewhat of a guideline.

Venomancer is a Support/Pusher who can also be played as an Off-Carry. He excels in securing early kills with his extremely crippling slow and various DOT's as well as scaling well into the late game with items with his devastating ultimate. He is best suited for a dual or tri lane with a carry but should have no trouble in the mid lane as he can gank pretty hard with his Venomous Gale.

All that out of the way, let's get started then.

Skills

Venomous Gale

A HUGE 15 second slow, incredible for first blood kills. A true one point wonder.
I always make sure to grab this first due to it's amazing, simply amazing potential at level one. Venomous Gale in conjunction with a good lane mate is a won lane.


Poison Sting

Poison Sting live up to it's name, providing great and stinging harass with your auto-attacks. Amazing slow and damage when combined with your Venomous Gale. Use Sting and your Wards to wither their health until you're ready to go in and gale for the kill.


Plague Ward

Need some vision on the side of your lane? Need some extra damage when pushing towers? Need something to tank damage for you?
Have a free ward for practically no cost every five seconds.
Plague Wards are incredibly versatile little tools for almost all of your needs as a support.


Poison Nova

Welcome to the King of Damage over Time.
Poison Nova. The end all use of Poison. A massive damage over time ultimate that gives Venomancer incredibly team fight presence and makes Venomancer a force to be reckon with all through the mid to late game.

Core Items

Power Treads

I find Power Treads to be the optimal boots for Venomancer, offering health, damage and mana at the press of a button. The only other options I'd consider viable would be Arcane Boots in a mana hungry team composition or Boots of Travel in a pushing composition.


Ring of Aquila

Ring of Aquila provides not only very cost effective base stats for Venomancer, but it also provides armor for your lane-mate and wards although there is a risk of it forcing your wave forward thanks to it's armor buffing your creeps. Try to leave it off during general laning and turn it on during ward pushing/fighting.


Shadow Blade

One of the things Venomancer lacks is a solid escape mechanism, Shadow Blade not only fixes this problem but also provides some much welcomed damage as well as doubling as a great secondary initiation tool. Think of a situation where you've just activated your Shadow Blade to stealth between members of the enemy team in an ambush to have your Tidehunter/Enigma use their Blink Dagger to get in the center of everything and use their ultimate while you spring out in the middle of everyone and use your ultimate, securing that it hits every member of the enemy team for a ton of damage. That's usually a won teamfight.


Aghanim's Scepter

Aghanim's Scepter adds a very noticeable kick to Venomancer's ultimate as well as dropping 40 seconds off of it's cooldown, a must have for mid and late game team fights. The average base stats it adds also help.

Situational Items

I cannot give an item build for every game that you play, 90% of the time it is all situational, just build to your game.

Here are some suggestions:

Gem of True Sight or Dust of Appearance

Useful when that Riki or Bounty Hunter is running around, make sure to pick some up before you feed him.

Black King Bar

Getting locked down by CC? Need a little extra tankiness? Grab this up to ensure you get your ultimate off. I usually don't pick this up unless they have at least three hard, guaranteed stuns.

Orchid Malevolence

Does the enemy team have a game changing ultimate or ability that keeps making you lose fights? Chronosphere or Black Hole got you down? Just want the extra damage because you're pubstomping? Try this one.

Butterfly

Has the game reached an hour long? Pick this up to get some damage stacked up, the evasion is great too.

Lane/Team Synergy

Top Tier

Venomous Gale combined with Blade Fury is almost a guaranteed first blood kill, amazing synergy with Venomancer.



Black Hole and Poison Nova work incredibly well together, this is your optimal team fight potential.

Secondary Tier

Because the enemy team didn't want to be alive anyways after these guys get started.

Scumbag Tier

You didn't think we'd let you just let you last hit without taking a metric **** ton of harass, did you? Yeah. Get back behind your tower.

Tips and Tricks

These are just some points I think every Venomancer player should take into account, most are completely overlooked.

Dota_range_display and You

dota_range_display is a console command in Dota 2 that allows you to see the green circle that you see when you hover over an ability all of the time, it is great for using Venomancer's ultimate and almost every other skill in the game. It is a very overlooked, incredibly useful console command that is invaluable when learning new heroes.

To use it all that you need to find is the range of the ability, most skills will tell you in game but sometimes you'd need to look them up on the Dota 2 Wiki. For instance, Venomancer's Q has a range of 800 and his ultimate has a range of 830, you can type in dota_range_display 800 into your console so that you will always know how far your Gale will travel or how close you have to be to hit every enemy you wish with your ultimate.

Very cool tool, try it out.

Micro Your Wards

If you throw a ward up in lane and just leave it there to auto attack it will push the lane. Solve this problem by giving your wards a stop command if they aren't attacking heroes, this can be done by using your Wards control group and pressing S or just holding CTRL and hitting S with unified unit orders on.

Stay Out Of Sight

Do your best to stay out of the lane but still gaining experience, either by soaking up lane experience or stacking and pulling creeps. An MIA Venomancer is a very scary thing, it is very easy to approach from behind a pushed up lane and get an easy kill with your devastating slow.

Don't Be Afraid To Roam

As I've said, an MIA Venomancer is a scary thing. You excel at securing kills early on, if your other lanes are struggling help them out! All it takes is some lane pressure or a quick kill to even out the balance of an otherwise losing lane.

Be Aware Of Your Position In Fights

I prefer to use Venomancer as a follow up to good initiation, see Tidehunter or Enigma ultimate, rather than an initiator. Venomancer is far too squishy to handle the retalitation from the enemy team as his ult is not CC but flat damage. Practice knowing when to enter fights and when to leave, eventually you'll get it.

Practice Makes Perfect

The same goes for every hero in DOTA.
Practice, practice, practice!
Soon you'll be making them fear the little slug that you are.

In Closing

Sometimes when I'm alone.. I rub gasoline all over my body, slither on the ground and pretend I'm a slug.