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quale

Mega Kill Posts: 856 Joined: 13 Aug 2007 gold

Magic Spell's Weaknesses and Counters

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 12:01 pm

Most heroes, especially intelligence-type, uses spells that deals magical damage. Nukers are the top among those that inflicts high damaging spells that players abuses to cause harassment and instant kill.

As we learn the spells of our heroes that deals magical damage, we must also understand it's weaknesses and counters. Magical damage is reduced by spell resistance. Enemies can also block these by spell immunity and sometimes Linken Sphere. Lastly, heroes can be stop from casting spells by Silence or mana drain.

SPELL RESISTANCE

All heroes have an innate magic reduction of 25%. This means, whenever you cast a spell against an enemy hero, the enemy hero will not receive all the damage. 25% of the damage will be negated or subtracted. Example:

This is the sad truth. You expect that the damage of your level 3 Finger of Death is 850, but in reality the enemy will only receive 638 damage.

The worst is yet to come. There are items that your enemies can buy to further increase their spell resistance. These are:

Hood of Defiance adds 30% spell resistance and Planewalker's Cloak adds 15%. Hood of Defiance don't stack with Planewalker's Cloak nor to another Hood of Defiance. The same goes to Planewalker's Cloak. Some heroes has their own skill that will also increase their spell resistance. These heroes are:

Viper's Corrosive Skin adds 5/10/15/20% magic reduction, Magina's Spell Shield adds 10/20/30/40%, Azwraith's Phantom Edge adds 10/15/20%, Pudge's Flesh Heap adds 4/8/12/16%. If a hero has a skill and item that adds spell resistance, all these will stack with diminishing return. Here is the formula:

I also feel dizzy with formulas so please bear with me. Let's get an example:

Imagine that, a hero with 69% spell resistance? He'll just laugh at the damage of any nukes. These opponents are hard to kill by spell casters, but not impossible. Usually, players will only buy items with spell resistance if the opposing team has 2 or more ruthless nukers. But anyway, it's not a big problem for your team. If you have a teammate that has huge damage per second (DPS), spell resistance will not save your enemies!

Neutral and enemy creeps have no spell resistance. But some summons has:

Level 1 and 2 of Visage's Revenants has 33% spell resistance, level 3 has 70%. Warlock's Infernal has a total of 49.75%.

This hero is special when it comes to receiving magic damages:

Raijin has a spell called Barrier that can give a buff to a unit. The buff is a shield that will prevent 150/300/450/600 magical damage. Barrier blocks the magical damage first before magic reduction is computed. It also has a duration of 20 seconds. Magical damage of some spells can't be blocked: Doom, March of Machines, Midnight Pulse, Rain of Chaos and Echo Slam.

SPELL IMMUNITY

From the word immune, it means resisted or protected. Enemy heroes under spell immunity will receive zero damage to any spells that deals magical damage. Here is an item you need to check:

Black King Bar's Avatar can make your opponent magic immuned for 10/9/8/7/6/5 seconds. Meanwhile, here are the heroes you need to be aware of:

Naix's Rage can make him magic immuned for 2.5/3.25/4/4.75 seconds while Omniknight's Repel is 5/10/15/20 seconds. Some units are permanently magic immuned, here they are:

Rhasta's Serpent Ward
Venomancer's Poison Ward
Flying Couriers
Black Dragons
Granite Golems
Rock Golems
Mud Golems
Elder Jungle Stalkers

Spellcasters can't do anything against spell immuned enemies, except of course start attacking physically out of desperation. What you can do is wait for the duration of spell immunity to end. If you're Gorgon or if you have Diffusal Blade, use Purge to remove the magic immunity.

SPELL BLOCK

When your spell requires selecting a target, then this item can get in your way:

Linken's Sphere has Spell Negation that can block any harmful targeted hardcoded spell cast on the bearer. One spell every 20 seconds though. Linken's Sphere can also block spells that deals AoE damage. Such as Lunar Eclipse of Luna Moonfang, Thundergod's Wrath of Zeus, Overgrowth of Rooftrellen, and there are other more. For the complete list of spells that Linken's Sphere can block, check this guide.

Robzor's Guide to Linken's Sphere

To put their spell block to waste, use any spell that will trigger it. Usually spell that has low mana cost and low cooldown. Once the Spell Negate is on cooldown, start striking your other spells especially nasty nukes.

SILENCE

If a hero is silenced, he's not allowed to cast spells except items. What a bummer. One item that can do this is:

Orchid Malevolence's Soul Burn will silence a hero and make him more fragile for 5 seconds. Some heroes has also their own skill of silence, they are:

Both Traxex's and Krobelus' Silence has a duration of 3/4/5/6 seconds. Puck's Waning Rift will silence his enemies within his 400 AoE for 0.1/1/2/3 seconds. Lucifer's Doom will also silence his victim for 12/14/16 seconds, Strygwyr's Bloodrage for 6/9/12/15 seconds and Balanar's Crippling Fear for 5/6/7/8 seconds (night) or 3 seconds (day). Rikimaru has Smoke Screen that will silence his enemies within it's 250/275/300/325 AoE (6 seconds duration)

ortrom's Last Word will silence you for 1/2/3/4 seconds and Global Silence is 3/4/5 seconds. Nortrom's Last Word will only work if he's not silenced and if you're within his 700 AoE. So if you use a global spell, as long as you're not in his AoE then you're safe. Also, if you cancel your cast backswing, you won't get silenced.

Purge is the only way to remove this curse, or you can just wait until the effect fades.

MANA DRAIN

Spellcasters and especially nukers relies to their mana so much. Some enemies will take advantage by draining it away. With low mana, they won't be able to cast spell. These are the items that can drain your mana:

Diffusal Blade has the passive ability called Feedback that will burn 20 of your MP everytime your enemy attack you with it, then Manta Style is the upgraded item that inherits Feedback burning 40 MP with every attack. Melee images that uses items with Feedback can burn your mana, but ranged are not. With Necronomicon, a player can summon the Necronomicon Warrior and Archer every 90 seconds. The Necronomicon Warrior has Mana Drain that will burn 25/50/75 of your MP while the Necronomicon Archer has Mana Burn that will instantly drain 125/175/225 MP (60 seconds cooldown). These heroes can also drain mana:

Magina's Mana Break can burn 16/32/48/64 MP on each of his attack. Anub'arak has Mana Burn that has 7 seconds of cooldown can take away 70/120/185/260 MP in an instant. Pugna's Nether Ward will give -150/-300/-450/-600% MP regen on it's insane 1600 AoE. Ezalor can cast Mana Leak that will remove 0.035/0.04/0.045/0.050% of heroes' total manapool drained per unit moved (5/6/7/8 seconds duration). Kael's EMP after detonation will burn 100/150/200/250/300/350/400 MP in it's 700 AoE. Lion can cast to your hero Mana Drain that will drain 20/40/60/100 MP per second for a duration of 4 seconds.

These guys are irritating. Make them taste all your nukes before they can even drain your mana.

UPDATE

Based on DotA 6.56 map.
"Magic Spell's Weaknesses and Counters" is for www.dotastrategy.com
Copyright© 2008 quale All Rights Reserved
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Last edited by quale on Fri Oct 24, 2008 10:03 am; edited 14 times in total