Centaur: Heart vs Aghs

I see Centaur Warrunner s fairly often in my games. I see that many of them are quite adverse to buying Aghanim's Scepter, and much prefer Heart of Tarrasque. I'm wondering why that is the case, since the two offer very specific benefits, I hoped at the very least the items would be much closer in buy rate.


Adds a ton of health and infinite sustain
Easy farming with double edge spam
Adds about 30 more damage to Return and ~140 damage to Stampede
Makes it really hard to kill you


Flying movement + 60% damage reduction for Stampede
Mana pool boost
Light stat boost
Easier to build

I am in the Aghs camp, since I think it is a teamfight autowin button on the level of Abaddon's Aghs, but I want to hear people's reasoning as to why Heart is better, or on what people buy on Centaur after you complete Blink Dagger and other small items like Hood of Defiance or Force Staff or Blade Mail.

Normally I go Blink Force Aghs... but I can see how heart is good too.

Heart is necessary, it improves your combo and your necessity of sustain, i cant use double edge to farm when i dont have Heart

but you don't need to farm when you have agh's :)

Yellulz, I don't know if one could classify Heart on Centaur as "necessary" as much as "convenient".

Like, first, when it comes to Centaur farming, you can do it with just a Hood of Defiance, you just can't use it every time it is off cooldown. If you have a vangaurd (or a stout with a hood) you can also just farm creeps with return. With heart you get a stronger return and you can use your double edge whenever you want.

Second, why does Centaur need to farm? The core of his skillset is space making ganker. Heart is a lot more necessary on someone like Chaos Knight, who needs it to deal his big damage, to have beefy illusions, and to sustain himself through his armlet which will accelerate his farm rate and let him fight almost any 1 hero who contests his farm. Is centaur a good position 2 offlane hero on the level of Timbersaw or Nature's Prophet? I dunno, because even though you have a 400 nuke on 5 cd, seems like Centaur doesn't do much damage unless people are right clicking him, and getting a heart tends to make people ignore you.

I would go for Lotus Orb or Shiva's Guard if needed more than aghs... Heart only when I encounter troubles with surviving... In my opinion, centaur is typical aura utility and aura carrier so I would buy crimson, pipe, lotus/shiva, aghs rather than Heart

Aghs is too good to pass up most of the time. Don't get me wrong, Heart of Tarrasque is a great item on him, as is Blade Mail, even Pipe of Insight after Blink. 4 seconds of 70% damage reduction for your team is too stronk though, if you use it right.

Hood of Defiance and Abyssal Blade are the two alternatives to heart as sustain items. Hood/pipe is the best option by far when the game calls for it. Vanguard/abyssal is a good option in essentially every game, however the buildup is awkward, and it's more expensive than heart anyways.

Aghs on Centaur isn't core, since the entire selling point of the item is the AOE damage reduction, which is literally gamebreaking in certain matchups (e.g Enigma), and pretty damn useless in some others.

I'd say everything that isn't blink is situational, he's pretty versatile.

I would disagree with aghs not being core, at worst it's situational but it's absolutely core on Centaur. 70% damage reduction on a very low cooldown for your entire team is hard to argue against, like Blink + Boots, Force Staff and Aghs is all Centaur really needs. Anything else just depends on the game

Well i like to farm with centaur because i can only gank very squishy supports, if enemy is 5 carrys the best is farm(because double edge is a one shot creep wave killer) and initiate on them when teamfighting

But you are right Cuttleboss, it is just convenient, Hood and Vanguard seems to do the job anyway

Also how to stack Strengh on Centaur without Hearts ? Not Sure if i am buying Eye of Skadi on him XD