Omniknight's place in the meta.

With the current meta being dominated by physical damage dealers like Troll Warlord, Shadow Fiend, Sniper and even Witch Doctor, I've been wondering why hasn't Omniknight been seeing as action? Maybe I'm not "meta" enough to know, but on paper, Guardian Angel seems like the perfect counter to all the physical/right-click damage dealers that are seeing so much action right now.

Or is there something that I'm missing, other than scepter of balance?

It's mainly because Omni needs to be very close to the team to land a good GA. His heal doesn't scale well (troll leeches the bomb damage back in like four attacks), degen is pretty worthless if he's a support because the AOE is small and he will immediately be silenced or picked. Repel is really really really good. If you're looking to counter troll or sniper single target DPS then just get SD, aba, ES, etc... Omni is a hard counter to two heroes IMO; he counters medusa completely as your team just fights into her ult and he ulted with aghs giving them 100% magic and physical immunity, or to a lesser extent to counters gyro flak cannon (if anyone ever runs him as a carry again). Without aghs it's too hard to place a good GA and only two of his spells are actually useful mid/late game (GA and repel).

I think the main reason he's not picked more is that he's too greedy. He's a stupidly good pub hero because in a pub getting Aghs-refresher on a support Omni is pretty easy, personally I finish my refresher in more than half of my Omni games...but in competitive...you'll have to deal with an Omni with tranquils and half a forcestaff at the 40 minute mark...and that's a pretty useless hero xD

Hero needs farm, at least a good positioning item to land his 600 AOE ulti (bleh). I absolutely hate playing Omni in a full mobility team with mass blinks and heroes like Storm because I can never be in position to GA unless I have Aghs.
Hero is more a position 3 utility / jungler than a support actually. Grab an early Soul Ring and stack farm jungle to get early Aghs. This guy is like, use GA in a fight, and go farm when GA is on cooldown. He plays like a freaking Spectre or Void honestly...greedy, greedy hero :)

Because Winter Wyvern right now is so much better than Omniknight in every aspect. Cold Embrace is very good against that type of enemies. In professional matches, it doesn't really matter, since they mostly get banned.


Much more aggressive during the entire game than Omniknight. Has better lane presence, high gank potential with Arctic Burn and Splinter Blast, really good teamfight with Winter's Curse. I literally made the enemy Troll Warlord kill their own Juggernaut with the ultimate, won us the fight. (was one of today's game I played, we had not so competent teammates, but a bit of WW magic and we got through it). They had a very greedy lineup though.

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1337088350


I really disagree with Hamster on competitive Omni. He can just farm jungle stacks with Purification (already done by a couple teams) and just roll out with a Rod of Atos. You suddenly have a 1.2k range disable on a "useless hero" that slows for 60% on a 12 sec(I think - could be lower) cooldown. And then everything starts factoring in more because he can actually start setting up ganks and getting in close and personal thanks to the HP he gets from Rod of Atos to spread the Degen Aura.






Buy Blink Dagger. Stay safe. Counter initiate with Guardian Angel.

I know, that's what I do in pubs. But I just think that if I was playing competitive I couldn't just be AFK stack like this from 5 to 20 minutes just to farm an Aghs essentially xD

Rod of Aui is an interesting idea. I still think Aghs/refresher is better, but I'm gonna try it to make up my mind. True it has good synergy with Degen Aura so why not.

I have to disagree with Wulfstan on the point that omniknight may be able to carry without Aghanim's Scepter.

why? because as is with all game-breaking ultimates in the game, it is not a 1-dimensional ultimate.The tower defence + team-fight protection factor pretty much destroy any chances of ratting while if omniknight is farming in the jungle and a skirmish breaks out, omni will still be able to help out.

BUT, that being said, wniter wyvern is just so much better.Her lane presence is by far the best in the game due to Arctic Burn and her attack range.

Wyvern is wayyy more unreliable though. Winter's Curse completely relies on the enemy team being stupid enough to clump up around their Troll...the AOE is just that bad ;)
And Repel is just sooo good.

In that same situation both Enigma and Axe would do a better job. Also both are better farmers than WW. Both Zerk Cal and Black Hole pretty much do the same job.


Personally I would love to see an Omniknight n Silencer support combo. Late game with refreshers they can stop the enemy team from doing anything while you take towers and racks.

You can still use it as a hard disable. It's not really hard to get a decent ult off if you Force Staff / Blink Dagger onto them from the fog. Think about it as a Primal Roar that does no damage. Plus, enemies don't have to be in the AoE from the start to attack. Even if they walk into it, they are forced into attacking their ally. You can be really cheeky and force someone into the AoE.



But neither is a lane support.





Omni doesn't carry, he's only there to take care of your carry in the laning stage. It's very hard to gank through Purification and Repel.