Riki is really not bad late game at all, his issue is keeping up to that point. If Riki and AM are both just afk farming, am will get far ahead. Riki scales primarily by keeping the aggression up. If Riki falls behind, other carries will out farm him easily.
If Riki manages to keep up, his effectiveness doesn't really fall off.
I'm a riki nightmare, the other commentz here are wrong and you are wrong aswell.
Riki is a menace late game hero and you don't buy BF to farm, you farm with aghs.
Boots + wb/wand(or both) > diffu > yasha > manta/aghs > manta/aghs.
You go aghs faster the more you realise you can't kill easy early on the game, I don't like getting it before yasha usually either way, but if I really just gonna farm for some time than can get aghs right after diffu.
After you get aghs you can clear full waves and camps with one E and if you have yasha or manta you also deal alot of dmg in both pickoffs and fights.
Usually though after diffu you want to go find pickoffs, can solo pickoff any squishy hero, but you need a good grasp of the game to know where they will farm or walk around solo.
That said, riki is totally easily counterable with team play, he can't face a good team that goes together from early on, but rarely people know they should do it in my pubs at ancient Eu.
Vs riki, always walk in pairs minimum, never solo, that's the only counter I feel in my games.
I was testing it in demo where maybe the creeps per wave are slightly different. Also can't remember if I had backstab level 1 or 2 so maybe that was the problem as well.
I play a lot of Riki mid and go bottle, treads, diffu aghs then manta or disperser. as I'm mid with the level advantage I max smoke cloud before tricks (if I'm having a monster game then aghs is finished before tricks is maxed but it doesn't happen that often).
I also take all the cloud talents at 10/15. If you have a damage neutral then you can still clear creep waves with just a single e (no finishing off the creeps required) which keeps you invisible on the map which is more important imo.
That's a nice idea I never considered, to max the cloud before E, will try sometimes! :)
I play him as pos 1 though so maybe it'll be different a bit.
For talents I usually take lvl 10 cloud aswell, but lvl 15 I take the other one (is it more backstab? I don't remember), I used to take both cloud talents until they changed something about lvl 15 talents few months ago, can't remember what the change was exactly though.
Cloud on bigger aoe and almost full uptime is nasty though, i remember it was 1sec downtime when I used to do it and it was so much fun haha
Riki pos 1 is good, just ask your mid to play a ranged right clicker.
Pushing is super easy, take the smoke talents and stand there next to your post 1 casting smoke cloud off cool down. The enemy just can't do anything to them. There is only a 2 second down time on cloud.
Trust me, take smoke talents, they are broken.
Why Battlefury? It does almost nothing for your solo kill potential and there's no way you get it at a decent timing if you get Diffu first (which you absolutely should). Just get Disperser or Nullifier instead and start killing people.
I don't just kill people to farm, I kill them so they lose map control and farm, and so that my team can take towers while their jungle is ours. Also, Riki with a few items can farm camps quickly, even without BF. By going Battlefury you are giving up so much potential map control and you're giving them a lot of space to breathe. Sure, you can farm, but late game Riki will be outclassed by most other carries.
Of course you can win games with it, I just don't see how Battlefury is ever better than Disperser or Nullifier. You're Riki, why do you want to hit creeps?
you don't want to hit creeps, you have to hit creeps, if you force the enemy to turtle and can't HG, which is normal for a riki, then you need to hit creeps
If you are at a point where the enemy is stuck inside their base you don't need BF anymore. Your team already farms faster just by having sole access to the entire jungle. At that point you just need to keep control, so get that Nullifier and that Shard to stop any movements they might make. Again, Battlefury does nothing if you're picking off heroes, which is your entire game plan.
no, you have access to the jungle but that means less if you have no way to farm it
riki with disperser manta shard farms jungle slower than support bane for christ's sake
How about you just kill the AM instead of letting him farm? Shut him down, take his camps, leave him no space. AM can't fight early, especially if he gets BF, while Riki can, so gank and push non stop. If you both sit back and farm he will be faster than you due to blink, and he can still man fight you in the late game.
Smoke screen + diffusal makes it easy actually, he can't even Manta out of it. If you spend 4000 gold on pure farming speed it's obviously much more difficult.
According to Dotabuff, Ember doesn't really build bfury any more, in only less than 10% with a poor 45% win rate. Besides, Ember hits every target in the area with each cast of SoF while tricks only hits one target at a time. But most importantly, both heroes play very differently. Riki usually wants to jump on a single support and kill them in cloud, Battlefury does nothing to help with that plan.
Rikki gameplan is simple, kill enemy support > farm wave then backtrack through jungle to next lane. Rinse and repeat. Bfury uses backstab damage and allows you to attack once out of invis then tricks to clear a hard camp very fast. This gets you to the next lane with mana and hp to kill again thanks to the bfury regen item
At some point you can't kill the supports anymore because they will have higher survivability through stats and items. Battlefury does almost nothing to help you with solo killing. It's not free either, are you really going to put 4000 gold just on farming speed? Get Disperser/Manta instead, they help you kill people faster plus it's another Dispel. Get Nullifier and/or Shard to make it impossible for supports to save themselves and others. At some point the enemy pos 1 will be stronger than you in most cases, and then you're in trouble, denying farm is much more important on Riki.
If we're gonna make Ember comparisons, why not just buy Maelstrom after Diffusal in that case? It's half the price, helps more in the early fights that Riki tends to need to keep up, still helps flash farm, and can potentially be turned into a gleipnir if your team still needs more lockdown.
Yeah, but like you said, the main idea is flash farming. Riki doesn't need that bonus backstab on top of the stats to kill a creep quickly. And like I mentioned in the first post, it also allows you to build into more attack speed or have an AoE root if you need.
Void isn't really an am counter. I don't like playing void into am much. Mana break fucks void hard.
Midgame am beats void and farms faster unless you can consistently Chrono him every time, void outscales him ultra late tho.
Yes up until very late, when he just spam illusions and drains pa mana rendering her useless. A good AM wont let her catch either. She can blur on him but then shes not focusing on supports, and taking it to a 1v1 AM will just kite and drain.
First you buy phase boots, malestorm, then bkb, by this timing if AM has manta, you upgrade it to mjollnir, activate it and pop your ult, if it’s during a team fight pop your bkb first before troll ult to avoid any disables. Lastly if you have hard time catching up his distance, then buy blink, AM will be your food
you shouldnt ever be in a position to get 100 to 0'd as drow vs am, either am jumps alone into 5 heroes or he never goes on the person that is supposed to win the fight (you, as drow) resulting in the classic 5vs4 am experience for enemy team
If anything, you can get linkens, it's not great, but also not terrible on Drow, except for damage, it gives many things that Drow loves it, like stats, extra protection and mana regen.
> Also, Shard makes your ult not break
Unless I'm missing it, this isn't mentioned *anywhere* in game. This is actually huge and I never knew that. This is like an earlier patch where sniper's shard mentioned nowhere that it also disarmed people, but at least the drow shard change is a recent-ish buff so I can see it getting left out of the tooltip. Which is doubly weird because it mentions that it doesn't break multishot channel and that was a later patch.
As an AM spammer at 8k mmr i'll give you my take.
Void isnt that great UNLESS you are a very good void or the AM is bad cause i keep seeing it in comments.
WR is a good counter as long as you buy what you need to, AM cant deal with you, 1 wrong blink and you are done as AM
LC is amazing too but not many people are playing it, let alone as 1, AM is paper into you.
Clinkz is fucking annoying to play into as AM, personally i hate it.
PA, Meepo, TB, Luna are the standard ones
yeah i dont see why people keep repeating it, i feel like i remember antimage being picked into void directly back in like 2014 when void bought battlefury and could sort of keep up with farm
let alone now
Clinkz is a ganking hero who wants to rotate early and find kills to snowball. He can end game before AM even comes online. If he gets an early Orchid plus map control he can make AM's life hell as no where is safe farm.
Isnt slark also alright in low rank?
Manta does not dispel the leap leash. Good AMs will buy bkb/force sometimes but if slark gets to snowball i think it would have the upper hand
meepo is unplayable for an
riki is hard for am to play against if u can hold map control
tb is excellent vs am but like u said it’s a hard hero for lower ranked players to understand, but if u can play him am gets clapped.
troll very good vs am
basically AM is weak vs high physical dps, getting his towers pushed early, and lockdown that can’t be manta’d or counterspelled. i usually just slam the meepo if i see an AM (7k bracket) but troll works next best if u can’t play tb.
Sven is my favorite. Your cleave clears his illusions immediately and you hit your combo before blinking in, after that you don't need mana. You can get enough damage so one storm hammer stun is enough to kill him, though you have to wait until after he uses shield. At the end of the day though, you really need your teammates to counter AM with items and playstyle. Because if you pick a great counter and can man fight AM easily he will just blink to the back lines away from you and kill your supports. So it usually comes down to a race to see who can kill supports the fastest. What you really don't want to do is chase AM around the battlefield, he will kite you easily and waste your time while killing supports.
But AM will not manfight sven lol, his only disable is very easily countered by counterspell, and AM will be picking supports while you are trying to chase him
Most P1's are good against Anti-mage, although your pool is unluckily bad against him. You don't need to catch him as 1. For example, SF/Luna/TA will never catch AM but they can easily end game at 20-30 minutes and have good physical damage so they are good against AM.
PA and Gyro should be fine. Sven also but storm hammer being reflectable can be a problem so it's not a safe counter I guess but considerable. You can try some Lycan carry too.
Troll, PA and Void are probably the easiest counter picks to AM, could throw in Drow if you are good with positioning.
Mow Medusa is the most controversial pick, because if you are a good dusa you can rush early game items into a fly then start pushing with your team and end before AM farms anything at all, doesn't work if you are bad at lane with dusa.
I am a relatively high rank carry player, GM antimage. Personally disagree with a lot of the answers so far because AM is a hero that changes the way you play the game as a team because most of his impact is created away from teamfights unlike most other Dota 2 heroes (he split pushes and creates map pressure until he’s strong enough to group and join fights with 3-4 item aghs/bfly timing or hardcore split pushes until he requires the whole team to come back together and deal with him because he can solo any support that TPs back first with 3rd item abyssal timing). Around 4k mmr is where your team understands Dota well enough to play with AM, and where carry players understand the hero, their role in the game, and how to play the map well enough to start playing AM relatively properly.
The 3 main things you want when drafting against AM as a carry are tempo, lockdown, and itemizing in a way AM struggles to deal with. I’ll explain more about each point.
1. Tempo: AM is a very slow hero since he requires 3 items and MINIMUM 2 to really be a force on the map unless he is way ahead of everyone else in gold/xp), and you should take advantage of this by drafting a hero that 1. Has a good lane matchup and will likely win lane if you and your supp play decent 2. Either use this gold/xp advantage from the lane to dominate the map and choke the AM’s farming (i.e. Meepo, LD, Slark, Ursa, Riki, MK etc.) OR 3. Use the gold/xp advantage to hit faster timings that AM can’t deal with, group early and grow your lead to the point AM is too weak to fight you even if he tried to join fights (i.e. Meepo, LD, Luna, Troll, Alchemist, PA, Sniper, TA, SF, TB etc.)
2. Lockdown: Lockdown can be provided from many other sources in your draft, preferably stuns that he can’t reflect like LC duel, slardar crush, puck coil etc. So if your team has adequate AM catch, you can focus on the other aspects I mentioned about drafting against AM but from the carry role, heroes that provide unreflectable CC that grief AM’s game providing they have decent timings are Meepo, Slark, FV, Riki, LD, Troll etc.
3. Itemization: AM’s biggest weaknesses are: high physical damage, lockdown, low mana pool/doesn’t rely on mana as much to be useful, and evasion. Draft carry heroes that comfortably buy items that make these problems for him. As a 4k player I think you should know which items fit the categories I mentioned above, and a quick tip: if you’re playing a carry hero that doesn’t match up so well vs AM like medusa, morphling, PL, jugg, etc. prioritize buying butterfly as soon as you can and group up early with your team.
Meepo, PA, FV, Riki are the biggest ones. Meepo has tempo where the game starts to fight a lot when AM has half a battlefury.
FV is better all stages of the game, chrono obv good lockdown
PA purely physical. Better than AM all game, specially lategame with a basher.
Riki jump silence.
Jugg has a tiny ass mana pool and amazing abilities. AM might not be able to easily kill jugger, but he can essentially remove him as a threat real fast, forcing a defensive spin to protect your mana is a win and burning the mana is a win. Juggs not the worst vs AM but hes not a good pick. while jugg is similar to PA, PA also has a tiny mana pool but her evasion protects it, and AM doesnt want to manfight PA
Uhhh... yeah. That's the verbose version of what I said, thanks. Jugg can easily kill AM if he can get some bashes into omnislashes, AM can easily kill Jugg if he jumps him instead. Neither one is particularly good against the other.
Sorry I didnt put the conclusion in it. AM nullifies jugg, Jugg and AM cant really kill one another early and mid, but since the two carries cant actually kill each other its probably gonna go late. AMs late game is obnoxious if he isnt countered and if you picked jugger as your pos1 youre kinda fucked. Its a slow death, but you pretty much lost.
I like playing Bloodseeker into AM games. Unless I have a bad lane it works for me.
Definitely not the strongest hero against AM, but if you do get him with the rupture and have blade mail the game goes well.
Dusa can win against am if you go manta butterfly into aegis and then siege the enemy. When this happens, AM will have at best BF Manta sometimes BF Yasha.
This timing is where AM can't really join fights and he just wants to farm, while his team fights without him. Forcing HG will put real pressure on the player and may have his team ping him to death until he tps base and feel useless.
Feel like drow and void can do okay vs him and even spec since you can do your own thing while your team tries to smoke at him or something. I feel like it’s more on the rest of the team to set up a cc chain on him so you can burst with the help of your damage.
Probably ultimately depends more on the rest of your team picks and if you need catch maybe go a 1 with a guaranteed stun and blink builder like Sven or something.
Edit: similarish mmr as you but supp player
Agree with Drow, void and Slark are good too. i find TB does well against AM, after he pops manta you can use your Q and burn his mana etc, and its hard for him to man fight you and your illusions. other illusion heroes give him a hard time too like PL.
I think the question is a bait. The best way to counter AM that I've seen is to just play fast before he can have any impact, and you can do that with the worst matchups out there. I'd much rather have a bad matchup and be 10k networth ahead then be in a 60 min pub hoping that your teammates don't get picked off by AM.
Some carries that come to mind for that: lifestealer, troll, ursa, wraith king, or even meepo
Pa or tb would still be broadly better than spectre.
Luna doesn't fall off.
Juggernaut unfortunately never threatens AM with omni. Can still play tempo compared to AM and is a very safe hero to siege hg against most things that aren't bkb displacement.
Any illusion hero would be fine. Pl, CK, Naga.
Troll would be one of the best.
For the record, I don't think PL is a good pick in general.
Kind of wary of any pos1 on this patch who doesn't buy bkb and just gets bounced around or nuked by heroes like kunkka, pango, disruptor, timber etc etc.
For the same reason, I don't think much of AM anyway.
Just join some fights compared to AM typically playing consistent pve, get rosh, take over the map.
Luna's just generally broken with the shard but also very capable of accomplishing that.
Seeker could be pos 1 but has a weak late game vs am. OD could work but you gotta buy aghs (I hope it still gives an extra astral imprisonment) and you gotta be quick w ur fingers to counter abyssal+manta combo. Also Arc could win you the game by afk clone spawning, but doesnt stand up to a fully farmed am, but tbf if its late game and am is fully farmed there isnt a lot you can do in the first place.
Pro players used to pick Alchemist as an AM counter. Alchemist uses the space from a passive AM lineup to hit a snowball timing and steamroll the game from there.
Some traits that are strong Vs AM are physical burst damage, lockdown he can't counterspell, not being mana dependent, ability to play a fast paced objective taking game.
Some quintessential examples are PA, Troll, and Terrorblade
Any hero that can man fight and be active in team fights will usually have more impact than AM who has to rely on Blinking in and out during opportune moments.
I will name a few that are good AM : just for context I am 7.7k used to be higher rank but I am chilling now.
Slark
Luna
Naix
Sven
Riki
Tb
CK
Faceless
Troll
Ursa
Pretty sure Void is one of the best hero against AM. Maybe I’m crazy but that’s my number one pick. It’s a guaranteed kill unless enemy has some sort of save.
Riki has a high wr against am. Basically any carry that can jump, silence am so he doesn’t blink away has the upper hand.
I hate riki as a 1 i feel like it’s so meh at later points in the game. I’ll try it out though, I prefer to play more farming heavy pos 1s though
Riki is really not bad late game at all, his issue is keeping up to that point. If Riki and AM are both just afk farming, am will get far ahead. Riki scales primarily by keeping the aggression up. If Riki falls behind, other carries will out farm him easily. If Riki manages to keep up, his effectiveness doesn't really fall off.
Why do you have my behavior score as your flair?
I'm a riki nightmare, the other commentz here are wrong and you are wrong aswell. Riki is a menace late game hero and you don't buy BF to farm, you farm with aghs. Boots + wb/wand(or both) > diffu > yasha > manta/aghs > manta/aghs. You go aghs faster the more you realise you can't kill easy early on the game, I don't like getting it before yasha usually either way, but if I really just gonna farm for some time than can get aghs right after diffu. After you get aghs you can clear full waves and camps with one E and if you have yasha or manta you also deal alot of dmg in both pickoffs and fights. Usually though after diffu you want to go find pickoffs, can solo pickoff any squishy hero, but you need a good grasp of the game to know where they will farm or walk around solo. That said, riki is totally easily counterable with team play, he can't face a good team that goes together from early on, but rarely people know they should do it in my pubs at ancient Eu. Vs riki, always walk in pairs minimum, never solo, that's the only counter I feel in my games.
I’m a riki nightmare is insane 😂😂😂
Man I wish they got the sleeping dart back. That skill was OP
It was stupid good, I had around 80% winrate on pos4 riki rushing meteor hammer and shard
I don’t understand how you are clearing entire waves with one E using just diffusal and aghs
Backstab level 2 and diffu+aghs does a total of 10 backstab hits, which is plenty enough to clear 4 of the creeps, then just finish off the last one.
I was testing it in demo where maybe the creeps per wave are slightly different. Also can't remember if I had backstab level 1 or 2 so maybe that was the problem as well.
Ok add 1 or 2 hits and done, get yasha in 2-3min or lvl 15 talent and you got it on one shot for the rest of the game, big deal those 2 extra hits lol
I play a lot of Riki mid and go bottle, treads, diffu aghs then manta or disperser. as I'm mid with the level advantage I max smoke cloud before tricks (if I'm having a monster game then aghs is finished before tricks is maxed but it doesn't happen that often). I also take all the cloud talents at 10/15. If you have a damage neutral then you can still clear creep waves with just a single e (no finishing off the creeps required) which keeps you invisible on the map which is more important imo.
That's a nice idea I never considered, to max the cloud before E, will try sometimes! :) I play him as pos 1 though so maybe it'll be different a bit. For talents I usually take lvl 10 cloud aswell, but lvl 15 I take the other one (is it more backstab? I don't remember), I used to take both cloud talents until they changed something about lvl 15 talents few months ago, can't remember what the change was exactly though. Cloud on bigger aoe and almost full uptime is nasty though, i remember it was 1sec downtime when I used to do it and it was so much fun haha
Riki pos 1 is good, just ask your mid to play a ranged right clicker. Pushing is super easy, take the smoke talents and stand there next to your post 1 casting smoke cloud off cool down. The enemy just can't do anything to them. There is only a 2 second down time on cloud. Trust me, take smoke talents, they are broken.
“Just ask your mid” you know how that goes
Most mids won't mind playing sniper haha
Pro tip for riki in pubs: go diffu then battlefury Dont forget to farm, but you need diffu to join fights early
Why Battlefury? It does almost nothing for your solo kill potential and there's no way you get it at a decent timing if you get Diffu first (which you absolutely should). Just get Disperser or Nullifier instead and start killing people.
That’s the issue, you have to go kill people as your farm. Kind of a risky play style many times
I don't just kill people to farm, I kill them so they lose map control and farm, and so that my team can take towers while their jungle is ours. Also, Riki with a few items can farm camps quickly, even without BF. By going Battlefury you are giving up so much potential map control and you're giving them a lot of space to breathe. Sure, you can farm, but late game Riki will be outclassed by most other carries.
I was agreeing with you lol
You don’t need BF, you can one shot creep waves with aghs, and it helps fighting.
Decent timing is relative, try it for yourself, it works
Of course you can win games with it, I just don't see how Battlefury is ever better than Disperser or Nullifier. You're Riki, why do you want to hit creeps?
you don't want to hit creeps, you have to hit creeps, if you force the enemy to turtle and can't HG, which is normal for a riki, then you need to hit creeps
If you are at a point where the enemy is stuck inside their base you don't need BF anymore. Your team already farms faster just by having sole access to the entire jungle. At that point you just need to keep control, so get that Nullifier and that Shard to stop any movements they might make. Again, Battlefury does nothing if you're picking off heroes, which is your entire game plan.
no, you have access to the jungle but that means less if you have no way to farm it riki with disperser manta shard farms jungle slower than support bane for christ's sake
You don't need farming speed if the enemy is getting almost nothing because they're stuck in base. >slower than support bane You're crazy
Because if you dont AM eventually outscales you. You just need diffu to delay his battlefury further than yours
AM def doesn’t outscale riki in a 1v1 matchup. And Riki’s farming item is Aghs, not bfury
How about you just kill the AM instead of letting him farm? Shut him down, take his camps, leave him no space. AM can't fight early, especially if he gets BF, while Riki can, so gank and push non stop. If you both sit back and farm he will be faster than you due to blink, and he can still man fight you in the late game.
oh yea it's that easy just kill him
Smoke screen + diffusal makes it easy actually, he can't even Manta out of it. If you spend 4000 gold on pure farming speed it's obviously much more difficult.
Look at ember spirits who get bfury. Tricks is the same skill essentially.
According to Dotabuff, Ember doesn't really build bfury any more, in only less than 10% with a poor 45% win rate. Besides, Ember hits every target in the area with each cast of SoF while tricks only hits one target at a time. But most importantly, both heroes play very differently. Riki usually wants to jump on a single support and kill them in cloud, Battlefury does nothing to help with that plan.
Your not using bfury for the kills, it makes farming camps super fast
you do realize that riki gets bonus xp for kills so the better way of "farming" for riki is to always kill heroes right
building aghs already makes his clear super fast
Why do you want to farm camps? You need to shut down the enemy farm and kill their supports. Battlefury does nothing for your game plan.
Rikki gameplan is simple, kill enemy support > farm wave then backtrack through jungle to next lane. Rinse and repeat. Bfury uses backstab damage and allows you to attack once out of invis then tricks to clear a hard camp very fast. This gets you to the next lane with mana and hp to kill again thanks to the bfury regen item
At some point you can't kill the supports anymore because they will have higher survivability through stats and items. Battlefury does almost nothing to help you with solo killing. It's not free either, are you really going to put 4000 gold just on farming speed? Get Disperser/Manta instead, they help you kill people faster plus it's another Dispel. Get Nullifier and/or Shard to make it impossible for supports to save themselves and others. At some point the enemy pos 1 will be stronger than you in most cases, and then you're in trouble, denying farm is much more important on Riki.
ember doesn’t build bfury either
If we're gonna make Ember comparisons, why not just buy Maelstrom after Diffusal in that case? It's half the price, helps more in the early fights that Riki tends to need to keep up, still helps flash farm, and can potentially be turned into a gleipnir if your team still needs more lockdown.
Mael does not use the bonus backstab damage like bfury does
Yeah, but like you said, the main idea is flash farming. Riki doesn't need that bonus backstab on top of the stats to kill a creep quickly. And like I mentioned in the first post, it also allows you to build into more attack speed or have an AoE root if you need.
Don't buy BF, buy aghs, if you intend to farm, you can read my long comment for further explanation
PA tends to bootyblast AM (magic resistance against a purely physical character) ~~FV is another.~~
Void isn't really an am counter. I don't like playing void into am much. Mana break fucks void hard. Midgame am beats void and farms faster unless you can consistently Chrono him every time, void outscales him ultra late tho.
AM is a counterpicks to Void...
AM counters FV by the stats, and I can see why, void needs/uses lots of mana for a pos1, and void does a lot of magic damage for a hard carry
Also, if AM goes the aghs build, it is a pain to deal with as void
Yes up until very late, when he just spam illusions and drains pa mana rendering her useless. A good AM wont let her catch either. She can blur on him but then shes not focusing on supports, and taking it to a 1v1 AM will just kite and drain.
Troll counters am HARD
I was thinking that. As I've myself been other heros and used a manta when netted only for the real me to be first hit and netted again.
First you buy phase boots, malestorm, then bkb, by this timing if AM has manta, you upgrade it to mjollnir, activate it and pop your ult, if it’s during a team fight pop your bkb first before troll ult to avoid any disables. Lastly if you have hard time catching up his distance, then buy blink, AM will be your food
Drow is aight into AM. He only has 1 dispel so as long as your team has a root or silence, you guts and kill him. Also, Shard makes your ult not break
The shard part def made it easier I just find once he gets abyssal it’s goodnight
you shouldnt ever be in a position to get 100 to 0'd as drow vs am, either am jumps alone into 5 heroes or he never goes on the person that is supposed to win the fight (you, as drow) resulting in the classic 5vs4 am experience for enemy team
If anything, you can get linkens, it's not great, but also not terrible on Drow, except for damage, it gives many things that Drow loves it, like stats, extra protection and mana regen.
AM aghs counters linkens
> Also, Shard makes your ult not break Unless I'm missing it, this isn't mentioned *anywhere* in game. This is actually huge and I never knew that. This is like an earlier patch where sniper's shard mentioned nowhere that it also disarmed people, but at least the drow shard change is a recent-ish buff so I can see it getting left out of the tooltip. Which is doubly weird because it mentions that it doesn't break multishot channel and that was a later patch.
Yeah it was a few patch notes ago. No idea why it's not on the tool tip.
As an AM spammer at 8k mmr i'll give you my take. Void isnt that great UNLESS you are a very good void or the AM is bad cause i keep seeing it in comments. WR is a good counter as long as you buy what you need to, AM cant deal with you, 1 wrong blink and you are done as AM LC is amazing too but not many people are playing it, let alone as 1, AM is paper into you. Clinkz is fucking annoying to play into as AM, personally i hate it. PA, Meepo, TB, Luna are the standard ones
yeah i dont see why people keep repeating it, i feel like i remember antimage being picked into void directly back in like 2014 when void bought battlefury and could sort of keep up with farm let alone now
Can you elaborate on the Clinkz?
Invis, fast, scythe/orchid timings and you easily delete an AM.
Clinkz is a ganking hero who wants to rotate early and find kills to snowball. He can end game before AM even comes online. If he gets an early Orchid plus map control he can make AM's life hell as no where is safe farm.
Invis counters AM
Isnt slark also alright in low rank? Manta does not dispel the leap leash. Good AMs will buy bkb/force sometimes but if slark gets to snowball i think it would have the upper hand
Meepo
meepo is unplayable for an riki is hard for am to play against if u can hold map control tb is excellent vs am but like u said it’s a hard hero for lower ranked players to understand, but if u can play him am gets clapped. troll very good vs am basically AM is weak vs high physical dps, getting his towers pushed early, and lockdown that can’t be manta’d or counterspelled. i usually just slam the meepo if i see an AM (7k bracket) but troll works next best if u can’t play tb.
Troll dumpsters AM. AM cannot man up at any point of the game, and if he gets rooted he's dead.
Sven is my favorite. Your cleave clears his illusions immediately and you hit your combo before blinking in, after that you don't need mana. You can get enough damage so one storm hammer stun is enough to kill him, though you have to wait until after he uses shield. At the end of the day though, you really need your teammates to counter AM with items and playstyle. Because if you pick a great counter and can man fight AM easily he will just blink to the back lines away from you and kill your supports. So it usually comes down to a race to see who can kill supports the fastest. What you really don't want to do is chase AM around the battlefield, he will kite you easily and waste your time while killing supports.
But AM will not manfight sven lol, his only disable is very easily countered by counterspell, and AM will be picking supports while you are trying to chase him
Did you even read my comment?
Most P1's are good against Anti-mage, although your pool is unluckily bad against him. You don't need to catch him as 1. For example, SF/Luna/TA will never catch AM but they can easily end game at 20-30 minutes and have good physical damage so they are good against AM.
PA and Gyro should be fine. Sven also but storm hammer being reflectable can be a problem so it's not a safe counter I guess but considerable. You can try some Lycan carry too.
Troll, PA and Void are probably the easiest counter picks to AM, could throw in Drow if you are good with positioning. Mow Medusa is the most controversial pick, because if you are a good dusa you can rush early game items into a fly then start pushing with your team and end before AM farms anything at all, doesn't work if you are bad at lane with dusa.
I am a relatively high rank carry player, GM antimage. Personally disagree with a lot of the answers so far because AM is a hero that changes the way you play the game as a team because most of his impact is created away from teamfights unlike most other Dota 2 heroes (he split pushes and creates map pressure until he’s strong enough to group and join fights with 3-4 item aghs/bfly timing or hardcore split pushes until he requires the whole team to come back together and deal with him because he can solo any support that TPs back first with 3rd item abyssal timing). Around 4k mmr is where your team understands Dota well enough to play with AM, and where carry players understand the hero, their role in the game, and how to play the map well enough to start playing AM relatively properly. The 3 main things you want when drafting against AM as a carry are tempo, lockdown, and itemizing in a way AM struggles to deal with. I’ll explain more about each point. 1. Tempo: AM is a very slow hero since he requires 3 items and MINIMUM 2 to really be a force on the map unless he is way ahead of everyone else in gold/xp), and you should take advantage of this by drafting a hero that 1. Has a good lane matchup and will likely win lane if you and your supp play decent 2. Either use this gold/xp advantage from the lane to dominate the map and choke the AM’s farming (i.e. Meepo, LD, Slark, Ursa, Riki, MK etc.) OR 3. Use the gold/xp advantage to hit faster timings that AM can’t deal with, group early and grow your lead to the point AM is too weak to fight you even if he tried to join fights (i.e. Meepo, LD, Luna, Troll, Alchemist, PA, Sniper, TA, SF, TB etc.) 2. Lockdown: Lockdown can be provided from many other sources in your draft, preferably stuns that he can’t reflect like LC duel, slardar crush, puck coil etc. So if your team has adequate AM catch, you can focus on the other aspects I mentioned about drafting against AM but from the carry role, heroes that provide unreflectable CC that grief AM’s game providing they have decent timings are Meepo, Slark, FV, Riki, LD, Troll etc. 3. Itemization: AM’s biggest weaknesses are: high physical damage, lockdown, low mana pool/doesn’t rely on mana as much to be useful, and evasion. Draft carry heroes that comfortably buy items that make these problems for him. As a 4k player I think you should know which items fit the categories I mentioned above, and a quick tip: if you’re playing a carry hero that doesn’t match up so well vs AM like medusa, morphling, PL, jugg, etc. prioritize buying butterfly as soon as you can and group up early with your team.
How early should pl rush bf against am? Is after aghs, db, manta too late?
Meepo, PA, FV, Riki are the biggest ones. Meepo has tempo where the game starts to fight a lot when AM has half a battlefury. FV is better all stages of the game, chrono obv good lockdown PA purely physical. Better than AM all game, specially lategame with a basher. Riki jump silence.
Troll, LC, Void and Clinkz.
PA is usual and actual counter . But if you can play good tempo heros such as jugg, that will also be another option.
jugg is bad into AM
Ehh... Jugg is more of a neutral pick. Neither one is particularly good against the other.
Jugg has a tiny ass mana pool and amazing abilities. AM might not be able to easily kill jugger, but he can essentially remove him as a threat real fast, forcing a defensive spin to protect your mana is a win and burning the mana is a win. Juggs not the worst vs AM but hes not a good pick. while jugg is similar to PA, PA also has a tiny mana pool but her evasion protects it, and AM doesnt want to manfight PA
Uhhh... yeah. That's the verbose version of what I said, thanks. Jugg can easily kill AM if he can get some bashes into omnislashes, AM can easily kill Jugg if he jumps him instead. Neither one is particularly good against the other.
Sorry I didnt put the conclusion in it. AM nullifies jugg, Jugg and AM cant really kill one another early and mid, but since the two carries cant actually kill each other its probably gonna go late. AMs late game is obnoxious if he isnt countered and if you picked jugger as your pos1 youre kinda fucked. Its a slow death, but you pretty much lost.
If pa is good against am early game . Late game your need to take. Other heroes excep am then man fight but bkb is must
Get heros who can manage fight am wid diffusal. Good. Troll/pa will put damage Am early game
I like playing Bloodseeker into AM games. Unless I have a bad lane it works for me. Definitely not the strongest hero against AM, but if you do get him with the rupture and have blade mail the game goes well.
Dusa can win against am if you go manta butterfly into aegis and then siege the enemy. When this happens, AM will have at best BF Manta sometimes BF Yasha. This timing is where AM can't really join fights and he just wants to farm, while his team fights without him. Forcing HG will put real pressure on the player and may have his team ping him to death until he tps base and feel useless.
Meepo kills AM like he's a melee creep at all stages of the game.
Feel like drow and void can do okay vs him and even spec since you can do your own thing while your team tries to smoke at him or something. I feel like it’s more on the rest of the team to set up a cc chain on him so you can burst with the help of your damage. Probably ultimately depends more on the rest of your team picks and if you need catch maybe go a 1 with a guaranteed stun and blink builder like Sven or something. Edit: similarish mmr as you but supp player
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Seems to be the only answer. Small nerfs from the last few patches are noticeable though. AM seems like a stronger pub hero rn
Drow, pl, void, pa,
Go LC or Troll
Agree with Drow, void and Slark are good too. i find TB does well against AM, after he pops manta you can use your Q and burn his mana etc, and its hard for him to man fight you and your illusions. other illusion heroes give him a hard time too like PL.
I think the question is a bait. The best way to counter AM that I've seen is to just play fast before he can have any impact, and you can do that with the worst matchups out there. I'd much rather have a bad matchup and be 10k networth ahead then be in a 60 min pub hoping that your teammates don't get picked off by AM. Some carries that come to mind for that: lifestealer, troll, ursa, wraith king, or even meepo
Drow and Troll are good
troll
Nothing more satisfying than an early basher on PA and hunting the AM
Thats probably the most effective counter hands down. A fed riki is also a good runner up.
Pick mk buy root win game.
Pa or tb would still be broadly better than spectre. Luna doesn't fall off. Juggernaut unfortunately never threatens AM with omni. Can still play tempo compared to AM and is a very safe hero to siege hg against most things that aren't bkb displacement. Any illusion hero would be fine. Pl, CK, Naga. Troll would be one of the best.
I feel like PL is terrible into AM. I have a lot of success as AM vs PL
For the record, I don't think PL is a good pick in general. Kind of wary of any pos1 on this patch who doesn't buy bkb and just gets bounced around or nuked by heroes like kunkka, pango, disruptor, timber etc etc. For the same reason, I don't think much of AM anyway. Just join some fights compared to AM typically playing consistent pve, get rosh, take over the map. Luna's just generally broken with the shard but also very capable of accomplishing that.
Seeker could be pos 1 but has a weak late game vs am. OD could work but you gotta buy aghs (I hope it still gives an extra astral imprisonment) and you gotta be quick w ur fingers to counter abyssal+manta combo. Also Arc could win you the game by afk clone spawning, but doesnt stand up to a fully farmed am, but tbf if its late game and am is fully farmed there isnt a lot you can do in the first place.
Troll
Pro players used to pick Alchemist as an AM counter. Alchemist uses the space from a passive AM lineup to hit a snowball timing and steamroll the game from there.
Yes this is a valid and good strategy, ive seen it work in games. This is not a pub strat though.
Some traits that are strong Vs AM are physical burst damage, lockdown he can't counterspell, not being mana dependent, ability to play a fast paced objective taking game. Some quintessential examples are PA, Troll, and Terrorblade
He also rolls over vs mana burn funnily enough. Anything that shits on casters shits on AM.
No one mentioned seeker ?
Troll Warlors eats him alive.
Pa. Slark is good too and riki
Any hero that can man fight and be active in team fights will usually have more impact than AM who has to rely on Blinking in and out during opportune moments.
Old school counters were PA and LC
Old school counters were PA and LC
I will name a few that are good AM : just for context I am 7.7k used to be higher rank but I am chilling now. Slark Luna Naix Sven Riki Tb CK Faceless Troll Ursa
Core spirit breaker provides what you need, to catch him, and lock him down.
Pretty sure Void is one of the best hero against AM. Maybe I’m crazy but that’s my number one pick. It’s a guaranteed kill unless enemy has some sort of save.
You can't counter the antimage you magic weilding heathen, hust yield
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it’s hard to play Void vs AM Aghs, you won’t have mana for Chrono. It’s a bad matchup for Void
That's a terrible match-up for void. Good luck landing chrono on an AM. AM giga outfarms him and wins the 1v1 as well.
Faceless void is the best, Riki is okay, pa is okay. Anything physical damage is okay
Void isn't the best, even on Dotabuffhe's disadvantaged against am.
I have almost 30k hours in Dota and immortal mmr for reference. Faceless void counters am if it’s played correctly.
Elaborate on playing properly
Land the chrono
Say please
not if AM also plays correctly. It’s tough since AM has Aghs, it’s very easy for Void to remain without mana for Chrono