Looks like we're in for some stormy weather, well those of us who follow the competitive Dota 2 scene anyways. As of late anybody who's been watching a fair number of games is likely to have seen either a Storm Spirit pick or ban. Anyone who's been following the scene for any decent amount of time knows that the surge in pickups is odd, but the bans are even more significant, because he didn't even register as a potential threat most of the time in the past.

Hero Overlook

Historically, Storm Spirit has been a niche pickup in Dota 2 at the best of times, so why is he suddenly surging in popularity? Let's take a quick look at the hero himself.

Storm Spirit is an intelligence hero with really good early dps thanks to Static Remnant which is an extrmeley low cooldown mid damage nuke. Overload gives his next auto attack after a spell cast bonus damage and a slow, and Electric Vortex which is essentially a stun with very small movement component that pulls the enemy towards you. However, his defining ability is his ultimate, Ball Lightning, by far.

Storm Spirit becomes volatile electricity, charging across the battlefield until he depletes his mana or reaches his target. The mana activation cost is 15+7% of his total mana pool, and the cost per 100 units traveled is 10+1% of his total mana pool. Damage is expressed in damage per 100 units traveled.

Range: Global

Radius: 125/200/275

Damage Per 100 Units Traveled: 8/12/16

Mana Cost Per 100 Units Traveled: 10 + 1% of Maximum Mana

Travel Speed: 1250/1875/2500

Cooldown, none.

Oh, also it turns him invulnerable while he's travelling.

Essentially Ball Lightning is a jack of all trades ability. It constitutes a pseudo-blink, invulnerability, and nuke all in one. The only thing it doesn't do is disable heroes or bake cookies. It also has no cooldown. Basically it turns Storm Spirit into the Mohammad Ali of Dota 2, "Float like a Butterfly Sting Like a Bee".

Storm is designed to abuse the ability as much as possible, and it's what separates the legendary one man killing machine Storm Spirit from the feeders. His strength gain is atrocious so Storm absolutely must dodge abilities with his ultimate. I mean, he has a whopping 967 base health at level 16. That's the same as Crystal Maiden. One disable and you're probably a dead man. But there's the heart of the reason why Storm Spirit is seeing play.

Metagame Shift

Teams are running comps that have next to no hard disables. Out of the current standard picks there are very few heroes that actually have single target lockdown to begin the process of taking out Storm Spirit. Nyx Assassin and Batrider, who are more often than not banned, Bane and Rubick. Those are practically the only heroes who have a hard disable to even aim at a hero who thrives when he's not getting shut down... Two of those abilities are ultimates, and one can be dodged. Then you've got more situational pickups like Chaos Knight or the odd Sven and that's about it for hard disables

Shadow demon is super popular right now but Disruption and Demonic Purge do next to nothing to Storm Spirit. Other than that there's things like Reverse Polarity (probably not going to hit Storm Spirit way at the back while he wails on your supports,) and things like Light Strike Array. Better start praying to some kind of diety if you want to land that on a good Storm Spirit without a setup stun. It used to be that you had to worry about things like a Tide hunter Ravage chaining into a Vegeful Spirit stun, or beast master ultimate just catching you completely out of position, or accidentally stopping your Ball Lightning short near that black hole that Enigma started channeling. This leads into another metagame shift lending to Storm Spirits potential popularity boost.

Traditional initiation heroes have gone the way of the dodo (minus Magnus). Most of the big initiations now are aimed at instantly taking one enemy hero out of the fight. Vendetta, Flame Lasso, Relocate ganks, any of these combined with a Naix bomb (Infest,) is just all the more potent.

This is what the teams are doing right now, so this means that Storm Spirit's initiate with Ball Lightning fits right in. Toss a Naix inside of him and you have easy pickoffs that snowball into 5v4 fights. He also doesn't have to worry as much about being initiated on because most of these abilities are going to be used on supports or out of position carries who have no chance of escape, rather than the guy who, given a split second of un-stunned time is going to be half way across the map. Adding onto this is the popularity of Keeper of the Light. Keeper of the Light and Storm Spirit are a match made in heaven if there ever was one (for obvious reasons).

There are just a lot of factors right now that lean the Metagame into a nice place where Storm Spirit fits in comfortably, and until changs start to happen that don't accomodate him so well, we'll probably see him become a stable pick for a while, rather than slip back into niche obscurity.

Predictions

Until teams start to swing back towards lineups that have some hard disables in them, Storm Spirit is probably going to see increased playthanks to the recent "re-discovery," of the hero. Eventually his presence in the scene (if it continues,) will likely usher in counterpicks in the form of either hard disables, or natural Orchid Carriers. Beastmaster comes to mind immediately as a good way to shut down Storm Spirit on the hard disables side (Roar is also great for shutting down Naix' Rage too as it turns out, he's my pick for the next hero to make a big comeback in general) and Clinkz as a natural Orchid Malevolence carrier who can completely destroy Storm Spirit unless/until he picks up a Linken's Sphere.

Other heroes that come to mind include Windrunner and Nightstalker. Windrunner because Shackleshot isn't disjointed by the movement component of Ball Lightning, and the fact that most of her item pickups include ways to break Linken's Sphere if Storm is so inclined to build one, and Nightstalker because he can break Linken's and silence Storm just with his kit. Once we start seeing Storm Spirits forced to pick up Linken's Sphere as a first item, he'll lose a lot of his potency and we'll probably see him wane in popularity once again.

Want to tell me how hilariously wrong I am about whether or not Storm Spirit is here to stay? Think my ideas for what counter picks we'll see if he does are stupid? Want to whole heartedly agree? Drop me a line in the comment box below.