Arc Warden's place in Dota 2

I took interest in the hero a while after his release, since I didn’t see him being played that much. Recently something caught my attention and it was seeing Arc Warden pop-up in the top games on the Watch Tab. One particular person was memorable at spamming it – Swedish streamer AlexTheFool, who at the time of writing is ranked 30th in Dotabuff. He is a pub star, most notable for his choice of micro intensive heroes, including the Warden himself. I teamed up with Alex to help me write this article.

The basics:

The Arc Warden is a ranged agility hero with four active skills – a single target slow and damage, a ground targeted aoe shield granting evasion and attack speed boost, a ground targeted indestructible mine and his signature ult, which creates a copy of the Warden with all his existing items and refreshes their cooldowns with a few exceptions (like refresher orb). It’s this ability that makes the Warden shine, as his clone is on a short cooldown allowing you to use a lot of items twice, like Hands of Midas, Necronomicon and consumables.

This is best illustrated with an example. If the Arc Warden has a Salve and a Mango, then his clone will receive a Salve and a Mango, so that you can use the duplicates on yourself to offset the hp and mana cost of casting the ultimate, without wasting your original items. This works with all consumables, including Black King Bar. If you have a 10s one on your hero, your clone will always have the 10s version. This makes for a gameplay that would have the original Warden hoard all the consumables and only use the ones copied to the clone.

The play style:

The way of the Warden is also almost written in stone as his role is exclusively a core one, but due to his double of everything and his vision granting Spark Wraith coupled with evasion and 50% single target slow, he can do well, even if not in a farming position. “Arc Warden can definitely be a support. Preferably a postion 4 tho, if position 5 try to communicate with your other support to make sure you get your midas because then you can buy all the support items without any problems.”

The laning stage:

Arc Warden will focus on getting last hits and surviving until getting level 6 and a Hand of Midas. Then stocking on Ring of Aquila, a salve, a mango and transitioning into farming near a jungle for the best double Midas results. According to Alex, the best way to lane is with a strong zoning support in either the safelane or the offlane, since Arc Warden’s abilities are really strong early on. His advice on playing the hero: “You have to know the mechanics and be comfortable with microing to play him at his full potential.”

The jungling stage:

The process is as follows: Warden pops his ult, feeds himself the clone’s mango and salve, then uses the clone’s Midas, skills and rightclick to help with clearing the jungle camps. Rinse and repeat until boots of Travel and a Necronomicon. For a skill build the most popular one is to max Flux first, Magnetic Field second, but Alex prefers to go for more damage and instead gets four points into Spark Wraith before level 11.

The ratting stage:

The fun then finally begins, where Arc Warden would continue farming, but every cooldown of his ult, he would use its boots of travel to send it to a lane to push. Use the Midas on a lane creep, summon the necro units, plop a Magnetic Field for some extra attack speed and skipping several tower hits. Here Alex offers the following advice: “Tips for not feeding necros, keep an eye on the minimap, if you don't see the carry (the one who usually kills/hunts the book) then u should consider removing the book from the lane and sending them into the jungle as the carry most of the times will go for the lane creeps”.

Rapier time:

Usually would be last in our holy trinity of Mjolnir, Scythe of Vise and Divine Rapier. Then the game play style for the Warden turns into something similar to a late game Ancient Apparition, where you only leave base to Midas a jungle creep every 100s and maybe farm a bit more camps if safe. Meanwhile, every 55s Warden spanws a clone of himself and sends it to some lane to rat. We turn to Alex for an advice for the item choices: “I think mjollnir hex blink/eblade is the most optimal combo. You need 2 rapiers for it to be efficient unless you go for it really early (mask of madness -> rapier). And when you decide to go normal build and game goes really far then you go for rapiers but you need 2x rapiers and bkb which is a lot of money”

Slahser's way of dealing with Arc Warden:

The counters:

So what can you do to stop all this from happening? “Weaver, invoker, lone druid, enchantress, bounty, OD are really good counters. The best supports against him are lion and phoenix” Along with that, the tried and true way of constantly ganking him and not letting him get out of hand, delaying that Hand of Midas, blocking jungle camps, the usual. But what if you done goofed? Is there anything you can do? “Yes, if Arc Warden gets his items early (midas, book 3) and go for rax and they have good stall heroes and good late game (like zeus) then the game might get really hard”

With all this said and done the hero is held as overpowered and flat out broken in the right hands of a pro player, but Alex disagrees. He considers the Warden to be in range, with only slight nerf adjustments to mana cost of Flux and Magnetic Field’s duration. “I don't ever feel like you can leave him to farm midas book bots rapier like any other hero you can't leave them to free farm.” The ratting part is balanced, by the Rat Warden’s low damage output, even with a Rapier. “If rat warden meaning rapiers and bkb hitting buildings then I would say yes... hard to explain but I've played a lot of games with him and I usually end up losing game where I have rapiers.”

The future:

In an interview with Gosugamers, Daniel 'Dendi' Ishutin expressed his opinion on the hero:

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I think it’s not really balanced right now. I don’t really like it to the point that he can farm really fast and be really in safe position and at some point when he gets his crucial items, he can do stuff from base…That way is creating this hero, that sits in base and create his illusion TP and go backdoor. But still is what I don’t really like. I think heroes need to be played inside of like team fights, pushing, ganking, stuff like this and if it allows you to win without that, just staying in base, being in a safe place, so something should be changed. Maybe some bounty for his illusion, maybe you can’t carry a rapier with your ultimate or something like that and then maybe we can try this hero in captains mode. But I’m not really a fan of it. I actually didn’t play it almost… like three games only.

When will Arc Warden join the ranks of Captains Mode and will it be in this state is something that only the Oracle and Ice Frog know. As far as pubs can be considered, the hero has a very low win rate and is not very popular, but maybe when the professional players get their hands on him, this will all change. For now, Arc Warden’s place in Dota 2 is on most people’s no-pick lists and a dread to have in your game.

We thank AlexTheFool for his cooperation and direct you to his stream, where he plays usually around 19:00 CET. He did express desires to try his luck at the pro scene, so we wish him lots of success in future endeavors.

Headline and top image source: Dota 2 Official Website

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