Axe's stats, roles, and game stages.

Axe is a melee strength early/mid game carry. Axe can play multiple roles. Axe can be a disabler, jungler, durable, and initiator. First, Axe can be a disabler and initiator because of his first skill "Berserker's Call." Berserker's Call is an AoE (Area of Effect) self-cast spell that forces all enemies in an area to attack him. Unlike many disable spells, Axe can target multiple heroes. Axe can be a useful disabler if he uses Blink Dagger on an enemy hero and uses Berserker's Call, because it catches heroes out of positon and can help land other spells or skill shots.Axe can also be durable and a jungler because of his passive "Counter Helix" and because of his base health regeneration of four health points per second. Counter Helix is a spell that has a twenty percent chance (PRD) for Axe to "spin" in a small area around him and do massive damage. Therefore, low health jungle creeps die very easily to Axe's Counter Helix. He can also be durable because melee heroes will take large amounts of damage when attempting to hit Axe.You can tell a lot about a hero from their stats. Axe is a very good hero stat wise. He has a strength gain of 2.5 and has a base strength of 25. That means he has about six hundred twenty five health at the start of the game. That is fairly high for a hero. Because of this you will be able to harass and receive harassment. His strength gain is average for a strength carry. Therefore, he will have more strength/health than most other heroes during the mid and late game. At level twenty five Axe will have 2145 base health. Next, Axe has a fairly high agility gain for a strength carry. He has an agility gain of 2.2 and has twenty base agility. By level twenty five Axe have a base attack time of 1.12 attacks per second. That also means Axe will have a decent amount of armor. At level twenty five he will have twelve armor. That is about forty two percent base physical resistance. This means Axe does not care about 2/5 of all enemies right clicks. In a late game situation, a hero who does 200 damage will only do 120 damage because of Axe's base armor.Lastly, Axe has a very low intelligence gain. He only has a 1.6 intelligence gain with a base of 18 intelligence. Axe starts with only two hundred thirty four mana. That is about three level one Berserker's Calls. Therefore, Axe is going to need heroes who provide mana to him or items that give him mana. Because Axe's spells on average only increase their mana cost by 30% he doesn't have as many mana problems late game than he does early game.Axe is one of the best early game heroes in all of Dota 2. Axe is very capable of getting a kill with two levels, one level being in Counter Helix, one level being in Berserker's Call, and a full or mostly full creep wave. This is because Axe's Counter Helix is a PRD (Pseudo-random distribution). That means the percentage chance for Counter Helix to proc builds up every time it doesn't proc. The first time percentage chance for Counter Helix to proc is 5%. Every time Counter Helix doesn't proc it increases 5%. If Counter Helix doesn't proc the first time it will have a 10% chance to proc. On the third time it doesn't proc it has a 15% chance. When Counter Helix procs it is reset back to it's original 5%. Therefore, the 20% is an average of the percent chance of various hits, not just one hit. This is why Phantom Assassin has a much higher chance to land a critical strike the more she attacks a hero than compared to the chance with one hit. Therefore when Axe Berserker's Calls a creep wave he will have a very high chance to Counter Helix because of all the chances he won't spin from the creeps hits. Here is an example of how Axe's Counter Helix increases in chance with PRD.In this video Axe Counter Helixed many times because of PRD. Since he was getting hit so many times but wasn't procing Counter Helix, Axe at some points had proc chances that where about 50%. Because of this effect Axe can get many kills before he even reaches level six.There is also another strategy many Axes attempt, but most who try this strategy fail. It's called creep cutting. It is when an Axe player goes behind someones tier one tower into the enemies safe lane and tank all the creeps or pulls the creeps into the small camp (recommended). When successfully executed not only denies the enemy safelaners gold but also farm. I would only recommend trying this strategy if you are going up against squishy melee carries and if you have ranged disablers like Crystal Maiden, Lion, Lina,Vengeful Spirit, and sometimes Earthshaker (melee exception). To effectively cut creeps you must have the right mechanics. To figure out where the creeps are located in the enemies safe lane, just look at your own lane and see where they are located in your lane. When your creeps are at your tier one leave the jungle into the lane and pull the creeps into the small camp for extra farm or tank the wave. At this point the enemy team will notice you are doing this. When the enemies try to attack you, your ranged disabler will defend you. If you don't pull the enemy creeps into the small camp then return into the forest for safety when the creeps are dead. Repeat this process til the enemies tier one tower is destroyed.Axe progresses very well in to the mid game. By this time Axe's ultimate "Culling Blade" has hit it's max. Therefore you're at your most efficient kill potential. By now you have kill stolen enough kills with your ultimate to get your account muted or receive six low priority games. Axe's Counter Helix and Berserker's Call are both still effective, but start to drop off. You're ultimate comes to the forefront of your kills. In the mid game Axe should be punishing anybody who is out of position. During the mid game especially Axe should be shutting down the agility carries to ruin their late game.Late game Axe turns into the utility hero of the team. Berserker's Call will be your most used spell. By now everyone has at least two thousand health and your four hundred damage Culling Blade starts becoming useless in comparison. Now Berserker's Call can cause more damage by giving an opportunity for your hard carries to attack whatever heroes are attacking Axe. It can also set up a big ultimate, or putting the enemies damage back on themselves with a Blade Mail. Along with being a disabler you can also push late game by tanking the whole wave for Counter Helix procs.