Is Naga Siren support viable as of 6.84?

You may have already seen the various new support items added in 6.84. I think that support Naga MIGHT be viable. This is, partly, because of her new Aghanim's Scepter upgrade, and partially also because Ensnare is a 650 range single target disable that pierces BKB and disables things like Blink on a 12 second cooldown. Here is the build I came up with:

1. Ensnare 2. Rip Tide 3. Ensnare 4.STATS 5. Ensnare 6. Song of the Siren 7. Ensnare 8.STATS 9.STATS 10. Mirror Image 11. Song of the Siren 12. Rip Tide

13. Rip Tide 14. Rip Tide 15. Mirror Image 16. Song of the Siren 17. Mirror Image 18. Mirror Image 19.STATS 20.STATS 21.STATS 22.STATS 23.STATS 24.STATS 25.STATS

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Items:
Starting Items:
Animal Courrier or Observer Wards
Enchanted Mango
Tango
2 Clarity
Smoke of Deceit

Early Game:
Flying Courrier (If necessary)
Boots of Speed
Town Portal Scroll
Urn of Shadows

Core Items:
Arcane Boots
Drum of Endurance

Extensions:
Blink Dagger
Aghanim's Scepter
Scythe of Vyse
Guardian Greaves
Hand of Midas
Refresher Orb
Heaven's Halberd
Diffusal Blade
Heart of Tarrasque

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Basically, Naga Siren could be an insane ganking/rotating/roaming support due to the fact that Ensnare is so insane. The only downside is her poop starting stats. Because of this fact alone, she is more of a late game support. However, if the enemy mid hero is a gankable one or a Queen of Pain, you can give your mid some kills. It is also worth mentioning that you can Song from further away than Smoke of Deceit break distance, so you can easily set up kills in very unexpected ways. Her starting Int is so bad, and her spells cost so much mana that you need to fix mana. You turn into a Sven, Chaos Knight, Sand King, or Earthshaker. Your combo at level 2 takes like, 85% of your mana pool. Luckily, we have Clarity. You can't really zone an offlane very well, but you can definitely leave your lane and gank other ones. In other words, Lion and Naga Siren could just turn into the uber gank squad. Lion can zone while Naga Siren pulls, and they can use a Smoke of Deceit and just chain disable the enemy mid to death. It has some potential.

As I said, Naga's starting stats are ***. Mana and raw HP are a problem through the early to mid game, and need to be fixed. This is where more stats come in. Mana regen is awesome too. The item that fits this description is Urn of Shadows. It is a ganking item that gives raw HP and mana regen. Literally perfect. Any HP that you get in your items will also be very efficient, because of your insanely high armor and agility growth. A cheap stat item for a support is Drum of Endurance. Aghanim's Scepter is also a very efficient item for raw HP, and gives some other stuff too, as well as the new ult upgrade. As of 6.84, Arcane Boots now give 35 mor mana/activation, a buff to the item as mana regen. Arcanes were core on support Naga pre-update, but this is just another buff.

She MIGHT be okay. Her lane presence still sucks, she is blown up my way too may heroes, and is (Sort of) countered by BKB. I feel that she could be a strong niche pick in certain lineups agains the ever-popular Queen of Pain and Shadow Feind. However, after a few games, the hero seems quite a bit underpowered so far. Interested in what the community has to say about it.

Naga has always been a variable support since forever, especially when they nerfed her base damage some long time ago. I feel that the new aghs actually strengthens this as it allows her to use it instead of just disengaging or initiating. You could, for instance, use it when your team is low on hp during a teamfight. The percentage hp recover is unreal and will let your recharge your allies to nearly full health.

Personally, I would skip out on the Enchanted Mango and opt for Stout Shield or Iron Branch as she is squishy as **** early on.

Though, I wouldn't get Refresher Orb on Naga Siren at all. She has too little mana to make use of the Song of the Siren > Refresher Orb > Song of the Siren combo unless you build mana on her, which would be kind of pointless.

All in all, I feel she's quite situational, she can be very good in certain compositions, but utter **** in some.

The problem right now isn't really that Naga Siren is bad support, although the topic can be debated. Really, why would you pick Naga over Lion? Lion is probably way better at supporting. He can do all of the support stuff that naga can do better, has roughly the same amount of hard disable, and can even get solo kills. He also doesn't have absurd mana problems. The reason why you would pick Naga Siren is if you want a BKB peircing disable in a trilane against a team with low armor and a gankable mid and low magic/pure damage. That doesn't come up as much as you would think.

It she still may be viable though, for the rasons above mentioned.

Song of the Siren.

AOE Eul's Scepter of Divinity for 7 seconds. 'Nuff said.

Now even heals your team for half their HP with Aghs.

There still is something, that naga can do better than any other hero however: Counter-Initiation.
This (and mby her good late game scaling) is the only reason naga support is picked up - at least if we are talking about competitive. Wombo-combos evolving around Reverse Polarity, Black Hole and Chronosphere are massively disrupted by Song of the Siren, even if there are 1 or 2 BKBs (cause of Ensnare).

With the new aghs upgrade, she cant only counter initiate, but essentially reset a fight, after some huge cooldowns have already been used. In the current Deathball / teamfight meta Naga support is therefor very viable.

You might be onto something there. Still though, unless they have a gankable mid and large amounts of AOE damage ( Shadow Fiend), it won't be exceptionally useful.

Then again, it could be very useful. I hadn't thought of that.




I also just realized how hard I've been playing devil's advocate.

I'll probably be picking naga support a lot more for my team, though. Mostly to see if it works. The C9 mentality.

Tbh I would prefer playing her as a greedy support at a 4 or even 3 rather than a carry these days.

She is really fast at lvl 1 and has an excellent disable which pairs well with heroes like Lina, much like Shadow Demon. No, she doesn't have a ton of killing power early on, but Riptide is awesome in ganks when you have carries that can follow up with physical damage.

She also transitions well into the late game better than most intel supports, and if she somehow snowballs she can just become a core if needed.

Agh's is actually incredible now. Her ult was always great for setting up a teamfight or counterinitiating, but now it gives you a chance to regroup, heal up, and completely turn a fight around. Paired with someone like Chen, you can completely heal your team with both ults plus a Mek most of the time.

A support Naga would probably want to pick up a Mekansm and a Solar Crest as core, with Aghs as the first major extension. Crest gives a bit of mana regen, but more importantly even more anti-armor. This makes Rosh melt like butter, and also helps out your carry. It also gives your illusions some fairly cheap evasion, which makes pushing easier.

There are actually some pretty terrifying drafts you can stick her in, because she does so so much as one hero.

Shadow Fiend, Bristleback, Dazzle, another support/an offlaner for some crazy healing + anti-armor.

Plus you can use her as a hard counter to just about any initiator as long as you hang back. Song's range is stupid big, so if you just wait out the ultimates you can come in and spoil them, giving your own team a chance to set something up.

Idk, there's a lot you can do with this hero and I think support is best right now. In my opinion Terrorblade is a little better as an illusion carry, and just going by the changes the Naga has received over the last several patches, I think IceFrog really wants her to be a support.

She actually got buffed as a carry a little, since Raidiance having a miss chance is huge when you can get it early. Like, she's much better in early fights now. Or really any fight before MKB's, because she can just send an illusion into a team-fight and give her team a massive advantage whilst she keeps afk farming.

I honestly don't know what I think about support Naga. Like, her Ag's is insane, but she just feels too greedy as a support in the current meta. And I don't think she's capable of doing enough early on to justify that compared to a lot of other popular supports.

Support Naga Siren is definately getting better tho. Slowly but surely, she is getting better and more viable. Probably another couple of buffs, and a meta shift in her direction would do it.

I do doubt the idea of 3 position Naga being a thing. Laning wise that just sounds unfeasable.

Different tools for different circumstances

Naga is better than Lion at:

• Initiation (before Lion get's blink) / Counter-Initiation
• Disengaging from fights
• Helping cores clear neutral stacks
• Stacking multiple camps with illusion micro
• Semi-carry transition if game goes late
• Stopping wombo-combo lineups
• Setting up wombo-combos
• Controlling BKB users with net and song ult
• Split pushes

However Naga has some problems:

• Need a lot of levels and items for a support role
• Poor solo-support hero for greedy lineups
• Net is essentially a root
• Weak against strong early aggression before 6
• If team is behind, hard to comeback

Naga also can't zone an offlaner out, or harrass in tri v tri situations. In anyway, because I think every offlaner will win a harrass war against her, even with Riptide. Which is pretty relevent, because leaving your lanes weak in this meta can be painful, and potentially self destructive.

Like I think if ran her, you'd have to run her with a really strong harrassing/rotating, yet pretty much farm independent support. Something like say a Skywrath Mage. Sure, you can have a strong safe-laner who adds to the threat of the lane, but otherwise pretty much every offlaner will have it's way with her.

So again, I kinda think she needs the meta to shift towards passive early game play more than it currently is before she becomes really viable.