OP? Maybe. Awesome? Definitely. (6.80)

By Mr. Potatobread

While many "unconventional" mid heroes can contest and OD mid, of the more traditional mid heroes, he is definitely one of the best. OD is one of my top 3 most played heroes and is my favourite hero. It is a hero that most new players don't really understand as his abilities' effects aren't the most obvious. I also see players who have no idea on how to play the hero and come up with terrible skill/item builds.



As a DotA player in general, I'm not the best there is - i rank at about 3k MMR and due to my general dislike of playing most hard/AGI carries, it's entirely likely that my MMR is not moving up any time soon.



The main focus of this guide is on item builds, as OD has a pretty solid skill build which I will also explain (and offer slight situational variations).



Here are some more things that can help you in the quest to learn one of the best Heroes in the game:



1) Getting a relatively easy kill at lvl 7.



At level 7, you should have 4 points into Astral Imprisonment and 1 into Sanity's Eclipse. SE will deal the difference in INT between you and your target, so you want as much INT as possible. First, use AI to get three stacks of it on yourself and your opponent. This will result in at least a 60 INT difference between you and your opponent. At this point you can do two things: you can use this bonus 30 INT to gank other lanes, or use it to kill your opponent mid. IN either case, you will want to trap your target using AI, getting yourself another 10 INT, and use SE.



SE damages units that are trapped by AI, and so you will do quite a bit of damage by doing so. If you chose to do this on your opponent mid, you had a total INT difference of AT LEAST 80 INT, which means you deal at least (80 * 8) * 0.75 = 480 damage - including natural 25% magic resistance. This means you will want to harass your opponents down to about 500HP before you do this. You can also use the final AI to position yourself to finish your opponent off with your right-clicks which now have 40 bonus damage from the extra INT.



2) Why you should not get Aghs (I'm a nerd and i need to put math on my guide or I will combust and turn into ashes)



(Skip to the paragraph that starts with "So the bonus damage..." if you don't like math) To calculate the extra damage you get from a regular item that gives you INT, you simply multiply the INT the item gives you by the current SE multiplier (8/9/10). However, since Aghs changes the INT difference multiplier, it is a bit more complicated to calculate. Basically, Aghs increases the multiplier by 1 on all levels ((8/9/10) to (9/10/11)). To calculate the difference of the damage between a SE with 3 skill points with and without Aghs, we can use the formula:



"11(d+10) - 10d"



Where d is the INT difference between you and your target. 10d is the damage you would get without aghs and 11(d+10) is the damage you would get with aghs (d+10 is used as Aghs gives you 10 INT). This formula can be sumplified:



11(d+10) - 10d = 11d + 110 - 10d = d + 110



So the bonus damage gained from Aghs is equal to the difference between your INT (not including Aghs' 10 INT) and your target's INT + 110. A farmed OD at level 25 with a Sheepstick, Orchid, Force Staff and INT Treads would be sitting on 203 INT. An average AGI carry would be sitting on about 80 INT without any INT items. The bonus damage received from Aghs in this case would be 203 - 80 + 110 = 233 damage. A rod of Atos would give you an extra 250 damage for 1100 less gold than aghs. In fact, the target hero would need to have an INT below 63 for the Aghs bonus damage to be above 250 in this case, and only Phantom Assasin and Troll Warlord can have such low INT at lvl 25.

