Winter Comes! - A Guide to Winter Wyvern

Intro

Hello and Welcome to my guide: Winter is Coming! - A Guide to Winter Wyvern[[. This is the first [[Winter Wyvern guide on Dotafire and I am looking forward to being the first.

Winter Wyvern is a ranged Intelligence hero. She excels in roaming and ganking but can also fill a support, semi-carry, and initiator/teamfighter role. She can dish out alot of damage and has a great heal as well. She is probably one of my favorite heroes in DotA 1 and am highly anticipating her arrival in Dota 2

WW Lore

Reanimated as a skeletal Dragon by a powerful undead necromancer from Northrend, Winter Wyvern posthumously retains cold energies. Seeking to annihilate any being radiating the warmth of the living, Winter Wyvern has turned his focus against the Radiant. Equipped with pure glacial elemental power, his ice can breathe vitality into his own allies or drive hordes of enemies into a locked state of cold insanity that turns them into mortal enemies against their own allies. Able to project this ice into splinters and blast them to cripple entire armies, Winter Wyvern is a wickedly powerful being possessing icy lethality. Many, including the Dire themselves, have come to wonder how this wintry beast even perished in the first place.

Pros and Cons

"So what are some things that Wyvern is good at? And what is he bad at?"

Pros:

• Great roamer and ganker
• Naturally tankier than more intelligence heroes
• Tons of utility
• Can go in any lane (possibly even offlane)
• Very Versatile
• Has lots of slows
• Has an amazing heal
• Has escape ability
• Good stat gain
• Scales fairly well

Cons:

• Low starting damage
• Low starting armor
• VERY slow movement speed
• Slow attack time
• Smallish attack range

Wyvern has a lot of pros, and while there are quite a bit of cons they really only affect hit attack power and Wyvern is not very reliant on his attacks anyway.

Items

Start:

Tango - Basic regeneration to stay in lane
Healing Salve - Burst Regen for sticky situations
Mantle of Intelligence x2 - Increases your mana pool and gives you a bit more damage
Iron Branch x2 - Gives you some basic stats and builds into a Magic Wand.

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Early:

Magic Wand - Some burst heal and mana
Arcane Boots - Gives you mana that you need to keep your spells up
Void Stone - Mana Regen that will build into a Scythe of Vyse or Eul's Scepter of Divinity
Shadow Amulet - Builds into a Shadow Blade

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Core:

Shadow Blade - Gives you an additional escape and ganking tool, as well as some extra damage and needed attack speed.
Synchronizes great with your abilities and gives you additional armor and needed intelligence.

A Scythe of Vyse or Eul's Scepter of Divinity are also very good core items for the disable and mana regeneration

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Luxury:

Veil of Discord amplifies magic damage and syncs well with Splinter Blast and Winter's Curse
Amplifies damage taken and silences target. Gives you tons of mana regs. VERY good item but not core.

Skills

1. Arctic Burn
Imbues you with a deathly chill, causing you to gain bonus attack range and flying movement for 6 seconds. Your attacks place an arctic burn on enemies that slows them and burns a portion of their health away.

Duration:6
Range Extended To: 700/800/900/1000
Slow: 25/30/35/40% for 5 seconds
HP Burn: 6%*
Projectile Speed Bonus: 500
Bonus Night Vision: 400
Cooldown:50/40/30/20
Mana Cost:120/110/100/90

This is an amazing ability. Gives you so much for such little mana. This is good enough to be his ult. The only downside is that is that the cool down is very long so use it sparingly. Only activate it if you are ganking or need a getaway.

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2. Splinter Blast
Fires a passive shard of ice at an enemy unit. Upon impact, it gains new life and splits off into active shards that deal heavy damage and slow to all other enemy units. Initial target is unaffected.

Range: 1200
Split AoE: 500
Damage: 100/180/260/340
Cooldown: 7
Mana cost: 120/130/140/150

Once again this is an amazing ability. It scales well into the late game and early on is a great ganking and farming tool. However it does have a high mana cost. Its range is insanely long. Remember it doesn't affect the target unit only those around it. Use it to finish of fleeing foes. also very good for jungling.

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3. Cold Embrace
Reduces an allied hero's body temperature by encasing him in ice, sending him into a deep sleep and regenerating a percentage of max HP for 4 seconds, in addition to blocking all physical damage for its duration.

Duration: 4
HP Regeneration: 20 + 3/4/5/6% of Max HP
Range: 1000
Cooldown:17/16/15/14
Mana Cost:75

Pretty much a temporary Heart of Tarrasque. A very low mana cost and a very long cast range. Gives you auto attack block. Very good ability throughout the match. The downside is they are held in place, so make sure you get them to a safe spot before using it otherwise you might screw them over (especially around nukers). I find it great that it does percent based heal so it is good in all stages of the game rather than losing effectiveness.

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Ult. Winter's Curse
Winter Wyvern strikes the battlefield with a maddening chill, cursing a targeted enemy unit and freezing it in place. All of the target's nearby allied units will go into an uncontrollable frenzy, attacking the frozen ally for a short duration.

Duration: 2.5/2.75/3
Radius: 350
Cast Range: 800
Cooldown: 90/80/70
Mana Cost: 250

It's like Frostbite + Berserker's Call. Imagine you got one hero frozen in the middle of a team fight. Suddenly everyone is hitting that one Pudge that's on a godlike spree. So yeah. You get the picture.

Roaming And Ganking

Your main job as Winter Wyvern will be to roam and gank in the early and mid game.

You will most likely be in mid, so ganking should be relatively easy. Splinter Blast will be your main damage tool. Arctic Burn will be your main chasing, slowing, and escaping tool. And Cold Embrace will be your main "Wow that was a horrible gank" tool. Using Winter's Curse is very situational and I would recommend saving it for team fights.

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You should be in wait for an enemy to get far enough away from their tower that you can safely attack them, and also so that they have more ground to cover when running. Make sure that the target has creeps or another hero around them. Have your allies in that lane start to focus less on last hitting and more on harassing, lowering their HP so that it's easier to get the kill.

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Shoot of at a enemy unit close to the target. All of your allies should now be rushing the target, auto attacking and using their skills. If the target looks like they may live, activate Arctic Burn. Keep auto-ing them so that they are slowed. If they aren't dead yet, now is the time to use your ultimate.

Allies

Wyvern is very good with heroes that have mana regen and those that need her heals and slows.
Some of her allies are:

Foes

WW's Foes are the heroes who can drain his mana, stop his healing, and hit him hard with nukes. Also heroes who can purge his slows.
Some of them are:

Changes to Wyvern since DotA 1

-Changed from male to female (similar to Legion Commander.)

Some Final Words

Well I hope you liked my guide!

Please vote and give advice on how to make this guide better.

-Blubbles