they are both still really good, but gyro is not exactly easy mmr. If you can play a good undying you could definitely grind your way to 5k with him. He might actually get nerfed again next patch though.

My choices for easy MMR this patch would be BS, SB, and undying. All very strong and pretty easy to play well. Still, I think people underestimate just playing the roles and heroes you are best at. Last patches troll and sniper fest was out of line with dota's history. Normally there are multiple ways to win and counters for everything.

I would add viper to that list too. Since the game is so focused on winning lanes & teamfighting early, a natural mek carrier is a great boon to your team, along with your ability to dominate your lane. You can really make things hell for enemy melee carries too. Definitely playing roles/heroes you're comfortable with is the most ideal thing to do, though.

BS really? I find him very underwhelming. How do you build him?

I usually play BS mid and build him as a tanky race car. (4.3k solo) His win % on dotabuff reflects his strength this patch. I start stout shield (pms if needed) quelling, aquila, (sometimes wand) treads/phase (treads better for fighting, phase is better to phase through stuff with 700 ms). Blademail has synergy with the bloodrage and is good against some lineups. Drums/S&Y > bkb if needed. Luxury is bfly/abyssal/skadi/mkb. You won't be able to stand up to true hard carries late, but you can through the mid game and you should also get a farm advantage since the hero farms v. fast, ganks well, and cleans up fights.

All of his abilities are good, especially thirst after the recent buff. You have bonus move speed and damage throughout the game now. Max thirst first. You hard counter weaver, slark, AM, sort of QoP.

His W is good for forcing enemies to move and can turn teamfights if you hit a few targets who over-committed or got disabled.

His steroid has lots of uses. Note that with a few levels its duration is longer than the CD. cast it on creeps in lane if you are taking tons of harass. you can trade hits and crush lots of people mid due to your heal and dmg and MS. You can cast it on an ally and yourself. You can buff a zeus or lina, etc. You can cast it on yourself and an enemy so they take double dmg from you and you get double the heal. (also works to heal from an ancient.)

Rupture is extremely strong against many heroes.

I've also seen people start eul's and dagon for more of a utility nuker role. You do so much dmg that people can't tp. The Ms and Tp interrupt and infinite mana from euls is decent. I want to try this build myself, but it seems like my team always has plenty of nukes. You can lane him flexibly and jungle with no tangoes if you use quelling to burrow into the trees. (you start quelling stout 2 branches)

i like bloodseeker as an offlaner, i don't really feel he is viable mid and think his ulti probably needs to be reworked

his ulti gives yourself cancer i believe

Bloodseeker is too easily countered by a single item (TP scroll) for me to really give him that much consideration actually. In lower MMR where people don't carry one, sure. Too many BS's I play against go for way too many solo pickoffs rather than farming/pushing with their team, which can really throw off their advantage.

In 6.84 BS is winning close to 55% of his games in "very high skill" games which average 3.9k+. It's likely around the top 3% of ranked players. Only 6 heroes are higher. http://dotamax.com/hero/rate/?skill=vh&time=v684&ladder=y The people on the low end of very high, while far from professional dota players, have tp scrolls. If you are playing BS you don't gank somebody solo who has a tp if you cant burst them down in time. (often you can if you are ahead or they don't react perfectly). Remember you can amplify your dmg quite a bit and you have a pretty decent pure dmg nuke. Having enemies tp back is also a victory which allows you to take objectives and stops their farm. Sure a few patches ago you could just tp every time because BS had no nuke dmg and didn't have as big of steroids. It's often not the case now and the hero is relatively easy MMR at any skill level.

Also, much of your strength is not from your solo pick off potential but from your ability to farm/jungle fast, buff your allies, and clean up won team fights.

I see your points on BS but there are just other heroes who can do what he does but do it better. Want to flash farm? SF. Gank? QoP. Tanky hero who can soak up dmg? Viper. When I do play him (random him) I always build eul's. It synergizes really well with all his skills imo.

just to add my own opinion: don't get aquila, don't get drums. Almost always get stick/wand. Treads is practically always better than phase. Phase can be good against a team with a lot of summons, like you don't want furion treants blocking your ****. Mjollnir tends to be really good in most games, it shreds supports who can't buy bkb, and you don't even need to hit them.

don't max thirst first. You almost always want to max blood rite first, it's really strong for team fights if you place it well. I usually go 1-4-2-1 by 8.

Something I've learned from experience: Rupture is not very good against qop. Her blink is 1300 range, and if any target moves more than 1300 distance within 0.25s, rupture will deal 0 dmg. I've found qops blink tping from my ruptures so often that I've just stopped casting it on them. However, it's very good against blink dagger and antimage blink, both of which are less than 1300 range.

IMO, Thirst's scaling is way too good to be maxed second unless your lanes look like they're going to be a disaster. You can probably skip the fourth point at 7 and go 1-3-3-1 by 8, but 1-1-3 at 5 seems like a requirement to me. With that third point, you're looking at 8dmg and 8%ms for every 20% hp that an enemy is missing (until they hit the 25% hp threshold). With any kind of reasonable trading going on in lanes, that's going to add up to an insane damage and ms advantage that can easily surprise out of position enemies.

Treads > Phase with the Thirst first build. Since your damage/MS will be coming from skill points, the most value you're going to get is from attack speed. I think you need some kind of early-game light mana regen item in order to stay on the map between fights with your garbage mana pool. Aquila or Urn depending on your teammates' builds I guess.

well, first i should mention that solo mid bs is not really viable outside low mmr. It's very easy to zone out bs so that he can't even get last hits and therefore can't heal either. You'll be begging for ganks as you get wrecked mid and have 0 cs. Although if your team gets some heroes on low health you can really surprise them that way and even get a solo kill, but it's just not reliable. Heroes don't exactly sit around in lane on low health all day, if they ever get very low they probably die or tp out or salve up, the thirst buffs just don't last long in lane.

So if you're not solo mid, you're probably on a sidelane sharing some exp with a support. So every skill point you get is very valuable since it'll take you longer to max out all your skills. You want blood rite maxed by the time big fights start happening, and in this patch they happen early. A good blood rite will straight up win you a fight. Besides the silence you're dealing enough damage to get multiple heroes low to buff you with thirst stacks. Maxed thirst isn't doing anything if they're all at full health, or if your team is single targeting down enemies. Thirst is better in lane but the game moves so fast now you really want to be ready for team fights asap.

btw, at lvl 8 with a 1-4-2-1 distribution, your bloodrage+blood rite combo deals 300 pure damage and 6s of silence. You get a nice 9s lower cd as well, compared to lvl 1 blood rite.

Yeah, I guess most of my thought process is directed towards lower MMR games. Because it's completely standard to have people bring far too little regen to lane and thus be sitting at much less than full health for most of the laning phase. I do think that BS is best suited for safe lane, especially paired with a support that can get a lot of value from a quick 6 and early farm when BS starts roaming. Lion or AA seem like good partners.

I could definitely be wrong here, but BS seems like a snowball carry that you want to pick to punish greedy lineups that are going to stay spread across the map. If they're picking a team that wants to group up and fight early, you shouldn't be picking BS to begin with as it's negating the main strengths of the hero.

Leshrac was my favorite hero in WC3 dota. I usually random, and just haven't gotten him much in Dota2.

I've played him 6 times in the past week and just crushed every game. XPM/GPM numbers consistently in the 700+ range. Each game has involved taking it mid. I've been against a Puck, Storm x2, Windrunner x2, and a QoP. Windrunner was the toughest matchup because shackle shot is BULL**** and windrun makes her a tough kill early on at the runes.

I start with a Null for a bit of stats and last hit assistance into bottle, boots -> mana boots, bloodstone (disassemble mana boots). The goal is null bottle boots bloodstone no later than 13-14 mins. Then I get Travels, followed by a Euls if I need the dispel (very helpful against Windrunner or if enemy team has a BH or something) otherwise just go Aghs. Octarine Core is next. My 6th item is usually BKB in case a nice long BKB is needed for a game-winning late engagement. Otherwise I'll just get a Linkens. 3400hp Leshrac is quite formidable at 35 mins.

In lane, I'm skilling Edict+Lightning for huge kill potential. I only take a single point in stun to stop TPs, and not until level 9. I find the 4s lightning with stupidly long range to be more consistent in securing kills than a skillshot stun. It's absolutely hilarious to get "ganked" by three heroes once my bloodstone/travels are finished and escape with 300hp and a triple kill. I can't tell you how many times I've just kited some poor bastard around with the ult/edict ticking on them.

I did lose one of the games, but that was just because of Omniknight+Slark during teamfights, and the Drow/Ursa on my team being utterly useless. Ursa rushed Skadi. Drow had treads/yasha at 25 mins. I actually started that game like 15-3-8, but once they stopped letting me rampage around the map, the game just got really really hard.


Super fun hero. Would definitely recommend. This is sub-4k MMR though.


I randomed Legion Commander in the middle of my Lesh games. I got utterly **** on by Viper middle. LC isn't my hero I guess. Two teammates berated me as you would expect. Next game those kids were on the other team, so I instapick Lesh. Went mid against the mouthy Puck from last game, and got 35 kills in as many minutes as we take the victory. 900XPM and 800GPM that game. So satisfying.

euls is extremely good to use on yourself while you ult is still going off, too.

I think most only put 1 point in edict early (or none until theyve maxed the rest).

Its great dmg but the cast time is annoying as ****

Yes, Euls with ult active is useful for a free 600ish AoE damage in a teamfight. The movespeed is good for him as well for solo kills. It's pretty great, but I am always trying to get that delicious 3-pulse wave clearing Aghs ASAP. And once you have Aghs, you are rolling in cash, have likely pushed ALL their towers, so having a Eul's is less useful for roaming kills because they're stuck next to their base. Euls into Split Earth is an obvious synergy as well.

Edict scales extremely well and is largely responsible for the item snowballing. You can straight up "backdoor" any remaining T1s early on, and with Travels, you can push T2s like crazy.

It's common for me to have like 9k tower damage and the next closest person on my team be at 1k or less.

Edict is a no-brainer and I think skipping it is a huge leak unless you are a support Lesh who will get 3-shot by being so close to the fight. The actual skill choice is the Split Earth vs Lightning, and I opt for Lightning because of the stupid low cooldown and more consistent success in using it. Missing stuns sucks, and if you just need to cancel a TP, they'll be standing still anyway so the tiny AoE on level 1 stun doesn't matter.

The slow on Lightning makes the cast time on edict less of an issue. But I will typically pre-cast Edict anyway as I come in from the fog on someone.

I've had good success copying Pelmaleon's (6k leshrac picker) build when going mid against most lineups. Item build is:

2xbranch + tango
bottle
brown boots
point booster
euls
finish bloodstone
boots of travel

Skill build is Q-W-W-Q-W-R-W then max Q and R when you can, skipping lightning for stats until bloodstone is done. You can solo kill virtually all mids when you hit 6 during nighttime by just getting the creep equilibrium a little to your side of the river, use fog to loop behind them on their high ground, turn on edict, pulse nova, and just walk at them. They either run back towards their tower and die or run through the creep wave and possibly survive (if you miss split earth) only to have to limp home and miss a ton of farm and exp. Once you get euls, the combo is really easy to land and is strong enough to even kill blink heroes if you get euls early enough. Euls, cast edict, wait a beat and cast split earth and walk them down with pulse nova. Eventually they'll get tired of getting picked off and will bunch up. By then you'll probably have bloodstone and can just bounce between lanes and jungle and blow up towers with edict.

When it does come time for actual team fighting, remember not to use your euls offensively. Get that edict and pulse nova throbbing, then run into the middle of them. If for some silly reason they think they can kill you and turn to focus you, leave your pulse on and self-euls for the free-est of damages.

After BOTs, it's best to go BKB or shiva's depending on opposing lineup. But **** that, you're so far ahead by now you know you're just going to build an octarine core and see if you can 1v5 their whole team anyway.

Lesh is really fun for now. Probably going to be like Lina in a couple of months where even the 3k players that I play against know how they work.

I feel sorry for you guys playing solo ranked at 4k+ and having to lane against good QOPs and the like every game. Skilling lightning would take all of the fun out of the hero. The QOPs I play against blink on top of me in the river to steal the two minute rune and then are surprised when they're dead from level 2 edict.

They blink on me at 4k, too.

Edict + 2x Lightning = dead hero

I'm a noob and would probably miss a low level split earth. Lightning is dummy-proof. But the stun is an extra 2 right clicks and more damage than lightning, so it makes sense that the 6k kids do that first.

pretty dissapointed tinker managed to choke and not qualify for TI, even as a wildcard

step aside NA scrubs time for the european masterrace to show you how dota is done

*as navi gets stomped by LC*

**** these groups are so lopsided now

group A has all the best teams

but holy **** that navi vs HR game 2, CIS DOTO what the ****

CIS DOTA is always the most entertaining. Hellraisers in particular pretty much never disappoint.