This is an in-depth support Treant guide to bash your way through the MMR ladder. The hero should preferably be played as a position 4 but can adapt to a position 5 role if required. Treant is basically a higher skill version of Bounty Hunter or Riki, however he leans more towards a support role in comparison to Bounty and Riki. Treant does very little damage but provides excellent crowd control. I am currently ranked top 500 on dotabuff and top 100 on opendota. (This guide was last update in 7.05)

Pros:

Heals buildings, this slows down your opponents similar to playing against Techies.

Living Armor amazing against burst damage heroes like Lina.

Living Armor on buildings punishes players who can’t coordinate to push together.

Invisibility gives the ability to place wards aggressively without your opponent seeing you.

Natures guise can also aid towards scouting for heroes who are jungling or giving vision behind towers before diving.

Has two bkb piercing disables.

Cons:

Slow farmer.

Hero does very little damage and healing, usually around 5k damage and 5k healing.

Some heroes can remove Treant’s armor very easily.

Struggles to gank mid heroes in comparison to other supports.

Weak lane presence in some match ups.

Can’t provide much harass or control of the lane if the enemy do a strong dual offlane or aggro trilane.

No hero should have a single skill build which works every game, you need to adapt your build to the game.

Build 1

Build 1 is the standard build, max Living Armor and then Nature’s Guise. If the enemy has multiple easy ways to remove the armor on allied heroes consider going for build 2. However it is still important to max Living Armor as the tower healing is very effective in the first 20-25 mins and later in the game the tower healing becomes a novelty as the enemy can deal with it easily.

Build 2

Build 2 will give you better kill potential early on as you have 2 points in Leech Seed, the disadvantage of this that you won’t be able to heal your allies and buildings as much due to a lower amount of heal and longer cooldown on Living Armor. If a longer bash duration will help you catch the enemy offlaner consider putting level 3 into Nature’s Guise instead of Leech Seed. For example against Weaver a slow won’t help you catch Weaver because of Shukuchi. Instead by increasing your bash from 0.4 to 1.0 sec (level 1 to 2) you will have a better chance of killing Weaver.

Talents

+2 mana regen The only reason not to get this talent is when you have a Crystal Madien on your team.

+90 gpm Focus on getting level 15 as fast as possible because this is like your free midas.

15% Cooldown Reduction Cooldowns also work on items such as blink.

+5 Living Armor Instances The last talent option is really debatable, typically I pick up this talent but I also don’t reach level 25 that often.



This ability should be maxed second as the 3 second cooldown and longer duration bash is very desirable for ganks and during team fights. The bash has true strike meaning that it can’t miss. This means you can bash a Windranger during windrun and Omniknight during his ultimate. You can cast spells or use items and it does not break the invisibility. Blink Dagger works amazingly with this skill. You can be invisible near trees, then blink, then right click and bash. You have 0.75 secs to do this until the invisibility fades off from Nature’s Guise. Look at the video under the “Item Reasoning” section for more information about this ability in combination with different items.

As Treant is more of a crowd control hero rather than a damage hero. When you have this skilled maxed it has a 3 second cooldown with 2.2 sec bash duration. In team fights it is often more effective to bash someone and return to the tree line to go invisible again to be ready for a second bash. In a good team fight you can get 3-5 bashes off. Remember this is a BKB piercing disable and ignores evasion.

If your team is ahead or has strong gank potential in the mid game, it is important to put aggressive wards. NEVER place aggressive observer wards unless you are invisible! This will ensure the enemy won’t deward them.

To get a good idea of how to move around the map without breaking invisibility takes practice. The easiest way to learn this quickly is to go into a private lobby and walk around the map with boots of speed and Windlace for 10-15 mins. Moving around is much easier with Tranquil or Euls. Depending on the level of Nature’s Guise there will be some paths which are not possible without max level nature’s guise. The benefit of knowing the most important paths means you can move around the map quicker and since TP scrolls now have a 80 second cooldown, you will need to walk from A to B more often than previous patches.

If you want to play aggressive early on or gank mid lane, it’s essential to have 1-2 levels in Leech Seed by level 4. Don’t forget that this ability heals too. The heal is most useful when you and your allies are pushing a tower after the end of a team fight, as you can heal multiple allies at the same time. Early on in the game, this ability uses alot of mana, so it should really only be used for playing aggressive. This can also cancel an enemy’s Blink Dagger.

Majority of the time it is best to max this ability first. Even if the enemy have an easy way to remove it from your allies, it is still useful to slow down the enemy from pushing towers. Any ability which does several instances of damage in a short period will just remove the armor immediately, such as: rot, flame guard, sunray, fire spirits, etc. However the armor is very effect against heroes who rely on 1 or more magical burst spells for getting kills like Lina, Mirana, Centaur, etc. Once you have arcane boots or the mana regen talent, this ability should always be in use. When you have level 3-4 in this ability, you should be looking at all your towers health to decide on which one to heal whenever this ability is available.

If the enemy is pushing a tier 1, you can use glyph and then use the armor on the tower during the glyph. This will ensure the instances are not lost and will force the enemy to commit even longer when trying to take the tower.

There is also allied heroes who can damage themself e.g. Slark, Pudge and Centaur. Try time your armor on Slark after he uses dark pact, don’t bother even putting armor on pudge and give armor to centaur before he uses double edge, this will block some of the damage he takes.

This can be used to engage or disengage fights and the root goes through magic immunity. A well timed Overgrowth is extremely effective against Centaurs ultimate. However it is important to note that the root can be dispelled. The most common dispels are manta and becoming magic immune from bkb, Juggernaut’s spin or Lifestealer’s Rage. If you don’t have blink dagger it is best to stay invisibly near the trees. The easiest opportunity to get a good ultimate off is when the enemy is pushing a tower. But you need to make sure the enemy supports do not have sentries down.

If the enemy is constantly placing sentries when their team is pushing objectives it is important to only initiate with blink. Otherwise you need to wait for someone else to start the fight, then follow up with Overgrowth after that. Later in the game the enemy will have ways to dispel your root such as bkb or manta. If possible wait until the enemy use their bkb and then root them or if playing against a hero like enigma wait until he cast his ultimate to interrupt his combo. When playing against Rubick you will need to cast Overgrowth while staying invisible and then cast Leech Seed on an enemy. The reason you would do this is so Rubick doesn’t get a chance to steal your important abilities i.e. Overgrowth and Living Armor.

Another tip is to not bash an enemy that is rooted, you want to have your disable to last as long as possible. If you ulti someone wait near the end of the root duration to cast Leech Seed as the slow it provides is not useful if they are not moving.

There is many counters to Treant but usually the best are the ones who can dispel the root of Overgrowth and remove the Living Armor instances on heroes and buildings. Here is some of the best counters:

Troll Warlord – Hardest counter, removes armor on heroes and buildings easily.

Phoenix – All phoenix’s spells remove armor quickly and is also strong in lane vs Treant.

Ember – Searing Chains and Flame Guard remove armor quickly.

Juggernaut – Spin and manta dispels root, spin also removes armor easily.

Doom – Strong laning vs treant and Scorched Earth can remove armor easily.

Ursa – Enrage dispels root and he can shred through armor on heroes and buildings.

Alchemist, Naga – Radiance – Burn does multiple instances and builds manta for dispel and tower pushes.

Slardar, Zeus, Bounty – Provides truesight but not the most effective counter when it comes to objectives.

Windranger – As Treant stands next to trees it is easier to hit a shackleshot, powershot can be used to destroy trees, and focus fire rips through the armor instances on heroes and buildings.

Other heroes to watch out for are:

Silencer

Timbersaw

Jakiro

Slark

Rubick

Venomancer

Oracle

Tranquil Boots

This item will allow you to move through the tree lines quicker and easier, however you will have alot of mana problems from level 6-10. Only go for this if you hit level 10 before buying Arcane Boots. Windlace stacks with Tranquils so you can get even more move speed, this can sometimes be a overkill.

Arcane Boots

You will need to upgrade your boots to be able to sustain your mana on level 6-10, as you should be using Living armor every time it is off cooldown (mainly used for towers) and your ultimate used alot of mana too. The only reason not to get this is when you hit level 10 before you can afford this item. At level 10 you get the mana regen talent.

Orb of Venom

If you don’t buy orb of venom starting off, you should buy it in the side shop as early as possible. This item is important for getting kills and harassing in lane. Skip this item if your team already has a roaming melee hero with this item like Earth Spirit, Monkey King or Spirit Breaker.

Sentry Wards

It is important to buy 1 sentry at 0mins. Never place your sentry down unless you know the enemy has an obs ward you want to kill. You need to save the sentry for the enemy’s sentry. If you don’t deward their sentry immediately you will waste time and lose control of your presence in lane until you get a sentry from the courier which could be 40-50 seconds. To know if an enemy placed a sentry down you can aggro the enemy creeps with an attack command, if the enemy creeps aggro but you are still invisible it means there is a sentry.

Quelling Blade

Consider buying a quelling blade if you don’t have tangos to kill a sentry. This item will come useful later on when dewarding wards on the high ground. Keep it in your back pack if you don’t have a free slot.

Magic Wand

If the enemy has an offlane hero who will give you alot of stick charges in lane and in mid game team fights, consider buying a magic wand.

Iron Branch

When building Magic Wand you may have one of these in your inventory. You can place one of these down and extend the range of your Nature’s Guise bash. From experience this idea is a novelty but can sometimes be good when ganking mid heroes. This was a more viable option in previous patches as the early levels of Nature’s Guise had a longer bash duration.

Blink Dagger

This item is most preferable as your first big item. There is various techniques which can be executed with the blink. This item should be bought at 15-25 mins. A late game blink is also good to ensure you can hit a good ultimate or if you purchased solar crest beforehand.

Blink from 1 set of trees to the next and maintain invisibility

Blink + bash

Blink + overgrowth

Solar Crest

This item will allow you to take Roshan quicker while still giving you a defensive ability to give you and your team mates evasion. Players will commonly underestimate the evasion as you can give your ally the buff without breaking invisibility.

There is 3 reasons you should go solar crest over blink:

Your team is ahead and you want to secure early roshan (sub 20mins)

Your team already has 1-2 blink dagger initiators on your team at 15-25mins, now your team needs more damage rather than more initiation. You and your team is behind and playing aggressive with a blink is not viable. As building a medallion with be seen as a defensive path in this situation.



Tip: give the Solar Crest buff the creep with the tower aggro to let the creep wave stay alive for longer, which strengthens your push.

Guardian Greaves

This item is very situational. This is only useful when you have alot of space to farm, you want to 5 man push and your team lack health regen. This item can be seen as buffing your 5 man fights. This is typically a bad item to pick up against higher skilled players (4.5k+) who can finish out the game and prevent you from farming this item freely. But in most of 3k mmr matches this item would be significantly more viable. This more greedy item is not punished as often below 4.5k. This item is complemented alot by the cooldown reduction talent on level 15.

Lotus Orb

Great item in the late game for pushing high ground or when the enemy have alot of single target disables like scythe of vyse, beast master roar, etc. Make sure you use dissemble your Arcane boots and use the Energy Booster for the Lotus Orb.

Refresher Orb

Two ultimates can be very effective against heroes who can dispel a single root easily like a carry with a manta but no bkb. If the enemy have no way to dispel overgrowth then it’s a 9 second root with refresher at max level.

Euls

This item can be great to dispel dust, Bounty Hunter’s Track and Slardar’s ultimate. It is also good for interrupting certain enemy abilities like using Euls on Axe during his Berserkers Call or Ursa during Enrage. This item is situational, if you plan on getting this item, don’t buy Arcane boots and only get the mana regen talent. If you use Euls while in range of the trees for Natures Guise. The fade time of natures guise will continue to countdown. Euls duration is 2.5s and fade time level 3 is 3 seconds giving you great defensive capabilities.

Glimmer Cape

If you want to go the defensive route of buying Solar Crest but the enemy do mostly magical damage, this item is a better option than Solar Crest. You can also move between long distance tree lines without revealing yourself.

As this is a support guide the first 15-20 mins is the most important and impactful. This section will go through my typical thought process throughout a match:

If you start with orb of venom it is highly recommended you go for the enemy’s rune. Preferably the enemy’s offlane rune as the mid player will go for that. Consider buying a tp to get there quicker, buying a tp is not worth doing against players lower than 4k.

When taking the rune, don’t show yourself until 0mins, you should try bash them and then spam the rune spot to pick it up. Even if you don’t get the rune you will bash them and slow them with orb of venom resulting in them either trying to fight you or ignoring you as they are trying to block their creeps. In both scenarios you will prevent the enemy from blocking their creep wave and make them use 1 tango. The only exception to this is when the enemy mid hero has a high base movespeed.

Players who have 2 pooled tangos as the enemy mid hero will then fly a salve out when they realize they only have 1 tango left. This is your opportunity to try snipe the courier. The only reason you shouldn’t go for the rune is when the enemy has dust. If they have 1 sentry you can usually just run out of the sentry range while staying close to the trees.

Make our way to the safe lane and harass with orb of venom and potentially get a kill. You can get uncontested harass when you use your nature’s guise. Wait to go invis then run up to the enemy and bash them. After bashing them you need to back, this will result in you getting free harass.

If you are not trying to secure a kill in lane then you need to stack the big or preferably the small camp at 0:53.

If no enemies come to the lane then consider doing something else. Either go into their jungle and leech experience or go to the offlane and provide some harass. If you have a smoke you can sometimes get a kill on mid. But if you don’t have a level in leech seed this is quite hard. You would be better off to leech experience in the safelane until level 2. If the enemy offlane is using up the regen of heroes in your safelane, you should put a level your armor on level 2.

Take the bounty rune or even go for both the enemy bounty rune and your own. Don’t use your mana to heal towers as the armor is not very effective on towers until level 3-4 due to the longer cooldown and less heal on level 1-2. If your teammates are getting dived early on it not really worth teleporting in to save them as you can’t provide much damage or control. You will just use up your mana and it ends up being better to just give them armor. You should also be pull and/or stack at respective times depending on the situation of the creep wave. Pick up boots of speed and windlace as early as possible.

You should be hitting level 6 from 8-12mins, consider buying a tome of knowledge to get that level 6. If you have the gold, you should buy arcane boots before you hit level 10. But don’t forget to buy observers and sentrys. If you hit level 10 but you don’t have arcane boots get the +2 mana regen talent. Once you have 3-4 levels in Living Armor, prioritize healing towers when you have the mana to sustain it. This mean when you are in the fountain, you get the mana regen talent or when you have arcane boots. The longer the towers stay up the more control of the map your team will have. If you run out of mana at any point go back to one of the shrines in your base,. Using a shrine will bring you to 90-100% mana and health and is quicker than the fountain regen.

Focus on getting your blink before 25 mins. If the enemy is off the map, go to their jungle and scout for your team. This can help setup pick offs similar to that of Bounty Hunter or Riki. In team fights focus on getting a good ultimate off and bashing rather than trying to go into a right click fight with the enemy. If you get the opportunity, try kill the enemy courier, remember you can bash the courier.

To be honest I think you should never buy this as your first major item. This item is not very effective until the game go on 50+mins, generally if you want to consistently play better than your opponent you need to be finishing games out earlier and less passively. Now you probably think I’m an idiot, if you want you can ignore this part of the guide or you can see my reasoning for this. First we look at why Aghs is a good item.

Pros:

Huge amounts of vision

Free ward every 35 seconds (29.25s with 15% cooldown talent)

Can get vision of roshan pit

Makes Overgrowth global for ganks

Can farm jungle camps

Now looking at those pros the item seems like one of the best Aghs upgrades in the game. In a lot of low to mid tier skill level games, this items can be good. But from experience this item sucks so bad. Once I complete my aghs or the enemy sees me with a point booster, they instantly buy a gem and quelling blade. This usually results in me have 2-5 trees actively giving vision at anytime, usually in undesirably locations. On top of this the gem forces you to play less aggressive and prevents you from easily getting information about your enemy when they are missing off the map.

Farming with Aghs does not prove to be that useful either. You just take away farm from your cores and you have a higher net worth on Treant, which doesn’t really do much as you don’t do much damage even if you are a 4-6 slotted Treant. The other disadvantage of putting the enchanted trees on jungle camps is that there is many other trees that give more valuable vision.

This item does not help with pushing high ground either. You can enchant a tree on the low ground near the enemies tier 3, but the vision provide from a tree does not give the same amount of vision as an observer ward. Radius in units: 800 for enchanted tree and 1600 for an observer ward. So essentially the enchanted trees are a weaker version of observer wards. If you have an ally like Storm Spirit, Batrider or any other hero who can destroy trees, they can accidentally destroy your enchanted trees during fights, this is not much of a problem, but does make an effect as you have a 35(29.25) second cooldown.

Now your typical Treant player will say: “I will never have to buy observer wards again once I get aghs”. But if you do some maths, can you still justify that a 4200 gold item is better than buying observer wards?

Aghs = 4200 gold

1 observer ward = 65 gold

64 observer wards = 4160 gold

Time to enchant 1 tree = 29.25sec

Time to enchant 64 trees = 31 mins 12 seconds

Now you must also take into account that if you die when your skill Eyes In The Forest is on cooldown, the time to enchant another tree will be longer than the figures above. It still takes 10 minutes to get 20 trees enchanted. My average match in ranked this month has been 38:23 mins (4.6-5k AVG MMR). This item just does not take a strong effect until you hit around 45-50mins. It also doesn’t help you to push your teams advantage early on like a blink or solar crest can. Typically aghs is bought from 20-25mins, but i’ve very rarely ever seen a game where the enemy hasn’t bought a gem within 2-3 mins after I finish Aghs, if not before I get Aghs. If you are in a low enough tier where players don’t buy gems, this item might be ok, but if you want to get better at Treant you need to learn how to apply pressure with blink and/or solar crest. Otherwise you will stay around that mmr forever.

Please dont’ buy this item unless the game is guaranteed to go late or the enemy team buys more than 1 midas. If you want to get good at Treant this item won’t allow you to learn how to apply aggression with items like solar crest or blink in the mid game. In some situations where the game will definitely go late, your team mates are carrying you and you want a way back into the game this item is viable, but with the level 15 talent of +90gpm you are almost getting a free midas. So its often better to focus on getting that talent than spending time farming up a midas, Treant can provide incredible crowd control regardless of having items or not.

Don’t let greed get the better of you.

Here is a highlight reel of some of my matches with Treant. If you liked this guide please follow my twitter