ENT Gaming

Based on experiences specifically on ENT games.
Agree/disagree?



S Tier

Geomancer - The strongest hero in the game but also requires the most skill. Has the highest AOE magic burst in the game. The reason why Meepo doesn't stomp every game is simply because no one has the skill required to do so. Only real vulnerability is that he cannot use BKB, so will always be somewhat vulnerable to AOEs and such.

Arc Warden - Is Geomancer Lite. Can be played as a split pusher or combat hero. Strong early game due to traps. Forces all enemy carries to go MKB or miss 100% of their attacks.

Spectre - Strongest global ability ensures that enemy supports will never be comfortable. Bonus damage makes ganks viable early-game. Damage reflection makes her win against enemy carries lategame. Suffers from vulnerability early game due to lack of mobility/survival skills.

Necrolyte - The ability to kill anyone at half HP, with bonus respawn time and no buy-back is game changing. Literally, can win the game in an instant with this hero by dropping the most powerful enemy hero. And unlike many other heroes with great ultimates, Necrolyte is still a completely capable hero while his ultimate is on cooldown.

Storm Spirit - Mobility, the hero. With enough items, hit and run becomes extremely strong. Enemy supports are never safe with Storm on the map. Hates silences, especially Riki's cloud.

Sven - No other hero has the instant team-clearing power of Sven's cleave + ult. Desperately needs BKB, and wants Skaddi.

Phoenix - The egg forces your attention. The firebirds gives it the ability to survive in the egg. The fire birds are surprisingly strong early and can get unexpected kills on people. Needs Radiance, so maybe not a good pair with Spectre.

Zeus - Strong global burst forces all the enemy supports to make HP items instead of the items they want to make. Never falls off due to passive.

Leshrac - As long as you have mana the damage just keeps going. Needs Bloodstone. Since the damage only stops when Lesh dies or runs oom, it ensures that Lesh will always be a focused hero, so play it like a tank.

Mortred - 50% evasion forces all enemy physical carries to make MKB. Massive crits make tanking Mort's attacks impossible. Needs BKB.

A Tier

Medusa - Mostly terrible early game (but the mystic snake can get some really humiliating kills on enemies who underestimate it), insane lategame if you can get there. Multishot means you can just sit there and keep on shooting. Ignore whatever the enemies are doing, you just keep on shooting and if things try to stop you, they just die.

Alchemist - Terribler early game, made better at lvl 6 with the HP regen. Builds items much faster than other heroes, but you better end the game quick after you 6 slot, because you do not want to be a 6 slot Alch going up against a 6 slot Spec or Mort.

Slark - Best assassin hero, easy escapes with pact. Struggles in teamfights with detection.

Anti-Mage - Incredible survival abilities allow AM to farm more safely than many other carries. The ult is AOE, so careless enemy casters can get their whole team wiped.

Winter Wyvern - Strong single-target focus unless the enemies play around you. Longest range with max HP burn with his abilities. Decently strong early game, very good lategame.

Bara - Easiest ganker hero. Falls off hard late.

Batrider - Broken early game with oil, makes it impossible for enemies to lane and takes easy kills on tower dives. Transitions to tankking in lategame.

Phantom Lancer - Destroyed by AOEs, but if the enemies don't have them, big trouble. This hero counters lifestealers like Naix/Leoric/etc because lifesteal doesn't work on illusions.

Chaos Knight - 4x illusions with 100% damage and the ability to pull enemies to them.

Bone Fletcher - Great ganker, but when the enemies get detection you will really see how much he relies on ambushing one at a time.

Clockwerk - Amazing early game, build for tanking late and initiate with hookshot. Rocket flare is good for scouting.

Doom - Obviously insane ultimate, but Doom sometimes falls into the trap of ulting and killing one, and then being useless afterwards.

Drow - Huge damage numbers in exchange for zero mobility or survival abilities.

Void - Can take almost any 1v1 with equal gear. But fall behind in gear and you will end up being totally useless. Sometimes Chrono can do more harm than good.

Shredder - Broken tanking with damage and slow throughout the entire game.

Gyrocopter - One of the stronger laners. Falls off late, but less than others due to Flak Cannon.

Huskar - Burning Spears makes him strong early, regen skills and near magic immunity allows him to turn around fights at very low HP. Dies to better physical carries though.

Destroyer - Very high magic damage, also vulnerable to being focused down. Annoying to lane against.

Omniknight - Very strong early-game heal, falls off late. Repel is always amazing. Degen aura falls off a bit. Long physical immunity for the entire team is amazing, but there are counters to this. Can be purged off, and many things go through it.

Sniper - This hero basically has 1 ability and is still top tier, because that's just how good 900 range is.

Oblivion - Not only is the Nether Ward devastating to enemy casters, but enemy carries have no response to Banish except to BKB.

Rikimaru - Best scout, one of the best heroes to pick off supports in the back. Struggles to take fights when detection is out.

Silencer - Global Silence is very strong, but can be countered by Euls/BKB, it's no guarantee of winning a fight.

Rhasta - Great pusher, vulnerable to being stopped before he gets to the tower. Relies 100% on ulti to do anything. Hates Sniper, who can destroy wards uncontested.

Leoric - No one wants to fight Leoric in a 1v1 melee fight, lifesteal is so strong. Tanks well due to Reincarnation.

Tiny - High damage ganker who can transition to a pusher.

Warlock - Upheaval is a brutal slow, infernals are a strong summon but they do fall off when everyone's 6 slotted, they can just be melee'd down quickly.

Lina - One-shotter hero, it's basically impossible to do anything about her ultimate except just have enough HP to survive it. If her combo is survived and she gets focused, will probably die.

Witch Doctor - Level 16 with Aghanims gets 4 bounces on Death Ward, which can clear a team very quickly. But easily interrupted by Silencer or similar heroes, or just by walking away.

Weaver - Near ungankable, unless you deal all of its max HP before it can use any abilities. Many people don't even try ganking this hero.

Earthshaker - Best initiator when everything goes his way, but pretty vulnerable to ganks and his ultimate sucks if the team spreads out properly.

Guardian Wisp - Worse than Omni in most ways, but can coordinate ganks or even rescues, which Omni can't do.

B Tier

Ursa - If this hero gets in your face, there isn't much you can do to not die. Likes killing Rosh early.

AA - Destroys any hero who relies on healing, like Huskar. Very strong stun.

Bane - Great disables/disruption skills

Juggernaut - Omnislash is obviously amazing but can often end up in situations where you do a little damage to everyone without getting kills, and then it stops and you get killed.

Bounty Hunter - Gets a lot of gold for the team with ganks. Like most invis, dies with detection.

Centaur - Good initiation skills with Rampage and Blink/Stomp. Ultimate counter is to just ignore him until last.

Axe - Despite being a tank, Axe often gets killed very quickly, and repeatedly, due to his low HP pool and over-reliance on Call to accomplish anything.

Abaddon - Borrowed Time is not as strong as many think it is. Something like Euls will just cancel his biggest asset.

Krobelus - Exorcism falls off much worse than Rhasta's Wards. Has a full ability slot dedicated to making the other abilities perform effectively, so basically a 3 skill hero.

Lion - Strong ultimate and disabled, but absolutely needs mobility items. I rank him a bit weaker than Lina, but fulfills much of the same role.

Dragon Knight - Very item dependent, with a full build performs ok but not as good as other carries.

Enchantress - Nearly unkillable by physical damage, but vulnerable to magic. Impetus does great damage but also runs oom quickly. Enchant is only good for jungling.

Enigma - Death Pulse and Black Hole are strong, but easily prevented or stopped.

Legion Commander - Amazing lifesteal and duel is obviously strong, but greatly relies on being able to get into melee range of the enemy with no mobility skills. LC can often times fail very badly.

Naix - Seems like the only thing this hero has going for it is the ganking ability with ultimate. Other abilities are mid.

Magnus - Requires very many items before becoming effective. Reverse Polarity can fail badly against a team who knows its coming.

Mirana - Low impact abilities. Ultimate countered by detection.

Morphling - Can be a funny tank, but overall just low impact.

Luna - Vulnerable hero, low range. Good pushing ability, ultimate can be good but can also fail badly.

Balanar - Strong early game nights, but often struggles to keep up with other carries.

Puck - Disrupting and annoying abilities and good escapes. Low HP and very vulnerable with abilities down.

Ogre Magi - All he does is stuns/debuffs, but he does it well.

Rubick - Can get people stuck with Telekinesis. His best ability is just copying a better hero's ability.

Shadow Fiend - Very vulnerable and huge setback on death. Good damage if you can get the items to not die.

Razor - Reliance on Static Link means that he can just get killed while charging it on a hero. Pretty good ultimate though.

Pudge - Very unreliable, and his ultimate is just a worse version of Bane's.

Skymage - Countered by moving, so needs Atos and things like it. Struggles lategame.

Slardar - Sprint is very doubled edged. Amp damage easily countered. When Sprint is on, killed easily.

Soul Keeper - Suffers same weaknesses as PL, but his ultimate can easily win 1v1s.

Tinker - Really strong with Hex/Dagon/other refreshable items, but can struggle to get there. With the right items, can 1v1 almost anyone though due to permanent hex.

Thrall - Glimpse can do funny things like sending an enemy back after they teleport in. Other than that, he just exists to cast his ult. Can be hard to land effectively as well.

Undying - Tombstone is powerful and can drain enemies down early game. But falls off much worse than other tanks.

Twinhead Dragon - Easily avoidable abilities, but if enemies ignore the fire they will die.

Troll Warlord - Much like Ursa, you just don't want this guy getting right next to you in a 1v1 situation. Often struggles to find a place in teamfights due to dying before getting in effective range.

Vengeful Spirit - Swap is hard to use effectively, but can be a strong initiator. Magic Missile is a good stun.

Venomancer - Just exists to cast ult and die. Snakes are a pretty bad pushing tool, especially outside of very early game.

Viper - Often doesn't know whether to be a tank or dps. Abilities are weird.

C Tier

Bloodseeker - Ultimate countered by teleport scrolls. Bloodrage is double-edged. Silence is hard to land. This hero got nerfed hard and never really recovered. You can still own people with this hero, but you're unlikely to be owning people who you wouldn't destroy with any other hero.

Invoker - Hard to use, falls off late and isn't even that good early.

Tuskar - Snowball is a weird ability, hard to use effectively and ultimate isn't good enough.

Kunkka - Unreliable, must put in more effort for less results.

Ember Spirit - Very good with a full setup, but NEEDS a full setup. Killed even more easily than Storm if locked down.

Rexxar - Exists just to stun people with his ult and then be a nuissance.

Bristleback - Countered by the very advanced strategy of ignoring him.

Broodmother - Destroyed by any AOE.

Syllabear - Requires too much investment compared to other heroes. No mobility.

Chen - Weird and bad. Only utility is recruiting ancient neutrals and pushing with them.

Crystal Maiden - Very weak regular abilities, and a great ultimate that is wasted on her. If the enemies have their monitors off, you can kill them with Freezing Field, otherwise they interrupt or just walk away.

Shadow Priest - Abilities are strong on paper, often times hard to find a way to actually utilize them.

Furion - Can push I guess, but Arc can do it better so why not play it.

Lycan - Very low impact abilities. Ultimate is good, but very low duration.

Nerubian Assassin - Doesn't really do anything well, except survive with Carapace. Unlike other assassin heroes, falls off badly late.

Treant Protector - Busted attack animation makes it hard to last hit with unless you know how. He can place "wards" on trees but that's about it. Ult is purgeable and only roots.

Brewmaster - This hero is good at splitting and then running away from the fight. Radi is good, but not as good as it is with others.

Queen of Pain - Shitty skills and doesn't have anything but skills.

Sand King - Buy 3 items to land your ult and be able to maybe deal the same damage Zeus can with 0 items. Can be annoying on lane.

Naga Siren - Hero seems pointless

Tidehunter - Exists to cast one ability and die. And it's a good ability but you could just have another better hero instead.

D Tier

Windrunner - Struggles to find a place in the game. Not enough stuns (and not consistent enough) to be a stunner. Not good enough nukes to be a nuker. Focus Fire reduces your own damage so not good enough as a physical carry.

Lich - Dark Pact is worthless outside of early game, Frost Nova useless outside of early game, Chain Frost easily counterable and usually falls flat on its face. Frost Armor is cool though.

Oracle (not on the tier list template) - A bad support whose best skill is countered by detection. Most people play this hero as a killstealing machine.

Shadow Demon - It doesn't really do anything impactful

Ezalor - Best hero for trolling teammates, buy dagger blink onto a cliff and then teleport teammates. Disablehelp does not work. Otherwise seems pointless, best ability is mana drain and it's not even that good.

Dark Seer - It can't do anything of value

Tauren Chieftan - Has 3 basic skills solely designed to set up his ultimate. And his ultimate isn't that amazing. And the setup isn't reliable.

Pit Lord - No value outside of damage reduce aura.

Techies - Ultimate ego hero for people to get a lot of kills and lose the game. Detection hard counters.

Visage - His summons just die and feed 100 gold per kill. Doesn't do much else.

Earth Spirit (not on the tier list template) - A hero made up entirely of unreliable aimed skills which accomplish very little when they hit.

Templar Assassin - Game crasher

ironically enough most heroes that start with the letter S are S tier. Id put sniper/slark/silencer/huskar/pl/bara/lina/lc/riki on S tier.

id move phoe/arc/sven/pa down to a

I think if AREM was the standard mode, this list would look a lot different. There are players who have played thousands of games and still don't know what the abilities of some heroes are. If they had gotten an opportunity to play it, they would probably play much better having a better understanding of the hero and its abilities. There's a guy who has played thousands of games on here and only recently found out that Thrall's ultimate can silence.

I mean, how many players are going to play Wisp? It's an instant -repick. So you have a few players who actually play it and it's usually the player who knows how to utilize it. Ezalor used to be a more common hero and it's probably one of the better supports in the game but almost everyone will repick it.

The issue with ENT is the player pool isn't as high as it used to be and very few -random anymore so you're just going to see the same heroes almost every game. Any list with ENT would have to only include their core competencies of the game like giving them a number ranking for their ability to farm/deny creeps, knowing when to TP and help, their ability to buy wards and place them in spots that are frequently used, setting up teammates, knowing which items to build, etc., rather than one specific hero.

Using Blueneme as an example:

1) He farms well/knows how to deny
2) TP's most of the time to help if he can
3) Buys wards and you don't really have to ask him to
4) Doesn't care if you KS him or not. He'll try and set his teammates up even if he's susceptible to dying.
5) Knows how to buy situational items
6) Has good positioning when he plays. Even if you think you're going to get an easy kill on him, you will have to put effort into it.

I mean, the guy basically only picks Rubick/Warlock and reached 1500 ELO. If he decided to play other heroes, he wouldn't have any issue because he just understands how to play.

And then you have some players who just plays a specific hero but the moment they get a new hero, it's like they are playing DotA for the first time.

I really wish we would go back to arem like the past. I felt like my abilities greatly increased being forced to learn each hero. I just can't understand how people will continue to pick bara now as if it will help with their gameplay. I'm no expert by any means but seeing the same heros every game is just sad and frankly boring. Its funny to me people pick the same 2-3 heros every game but fail to progress. I believe learning each hero, even a little bit, makes you a better player.

Using Mogul as a example:

1) Plays rhasta, skeleton king, and void. Sometimes pl or sniper.
2) Goes same exact items each game. This is ridiculous but hilarious.
3) Sometimes wins with rhasta because he occasionally realizes ulting raxes with snakes is a good thing vs ulting for kills. Latter is more common sadly.
4) Plays void. Always catches teammates in ult yet doesn't care his teammates get killed due to his incompetence.
5) Always makes a dumb move when the game is in the critical stage (pushing solo when team is trying to rax)
6) He wins 2 games then loses the next 5 resulting in new account name MogulXXX etc.
7) Moral of the story? Learning more than a few heros will help you counter enemy picks and gain you more wins.

EdteOfChaos2 wrote:Based on experiences specifically on ENT games.
Agree/disagree?

Nerubian Assassin - Doesn't really do anything well, except survive with Carapace. Unlike other assassin heroes, falls off badly late.

Nerubian Assassin does not suck. He has two stuns (impale and carapace) and his mana burn is devastating late game to int heroes and heroes like Skeleton King. If you get dagon early and get some kills, and then transition to tank like build late game, he can be very effective.

I suck with him, but hes a good hero.

I really don't think you're that terrible with NA, I just don't think NA is a very good hero overall. It's definitely not a bottom tier hero, but there are heroes who do everything better than NA does. The issue with NA is that, like many invisible assassins he depends on surprise to get into close range and that's just not going to happen lategame unless the enemies don't really know what they're doing. Unlike Stealth Assassin and Slark who fill much the same role as NA, NA just doesn't have the endgame power to do much.

The mana burn is weird, being a skill that you might want to use as an early-game nuke, but it scales only off the enemy int making it pretty bad early, and really bad before level 7 (assuming all skill points are put into it). Whereas all of the other skills just deal raw damage, honestly if the mana burn just did like 350 at level 4, I'd take the hero much more seriously as a powerful earlygame ganker. But it doesn't. Mana burning int heroes is actually not even really what you want a mana burn to be... I'd rather be able to mana burn a Leoric and make him unable to reincarnate, or mana burn a Slark and make him unable to lothars/dance away. But you can't reliably do that with NA because of their lower int, only burn int heroes who will have the mana pools to still be able to cast. Those heroes can always get more mana than they can get int, just due to how items work. And I know it's damage too, and the damage is fine but lategame the supports will have the HP to be fine. Like even the best-case scenario of dealing ~700 damage with Mana Burn to a support. You know how long it takes a 6 slotted Riki to deal 700 damage to a support? Like 0.5 seconds and his attacks don't go on cooldown, and also he has mobility to get in melee without relying on invis.

The mana burn isn't good enough for NA to be an "anti int" character. Oblivion fills that role well. You know what his ward does? It deals ~3x the mana you spend, and endgame int ultimates can cost 500-700 mana. Also it affects the entire enemy team and has zero cooldown and an oppressive AOE that you can't get out of if the fight is at a tower, and enough hits that you can't kill it if it's placed within enemy lines. Enemy sky mages can die in one cycle of skills if they don't have huge HP pool. That's what an anti int skill should look like.

NA's impale is a worse version of Lion's in that it doesn't auto aim at heroes, so it's actually kind of hard to hit a moving target. Scaling also makes this ability pretty bad before it's maxed on skill points, but maybe you'd rather put those skill points on Mana Burn instead.

Spiked Carapace is good and can cause some real issues to teams who don't know about it. But it's completely possible to play around SC as a burst hero. You just don't aim NA unless he's stunned or silenced and SC will literally never hit you. Then he gets stunned by someone and you dump all of your abilities on him. But SC causing issues for channeling heroes does mean it will always have a place in the game, as yet another way to ruin CM's day. Also can be great for escaping bad situations. It's NA's best skill for sure.

Vendetta, unlike nearly every other invis skill in the game, does not have 100% uptime until level 16. At which point the enemies will certainly have gem. I believe every other invis hero has 100% uptime invis at level 1 (Weaver excepted obviously).

Overall a hero whose design I dislike. I've never really seen anyone be consistently effective with NA. Sure you can solo mid to get 7 sooner and build a quick dagon to have a pretty decent burst damage, but so can like 25 other heroes (who all are better than NA later). At 2800 gold, invisibility is a cheap investment to get on any hero and having your ult be just wind walk is not very impressive I think. Most other WW abilities have something unique they bring, Vendetta's "unique" is just break damage which often doesn't even happen if the enemies have detection. In return, Vendetta has a higher mana cost and long cooldown. Not a very good ability.

Also last reason I dislike NA, he has some really bad mana issues for an agi hero. Just the effect of having spammable abilities on a low mana hero. This means you'll have to make items that you don't want to make, just to not run oom before you've even cast one cycle of abilities. Building Dagon will just make your mana issues worse, since you now have another button to press. You spend more mana on Dagon than you get from the int.


I do think AREM is better overall than APEM, but I do think AREM has one major issue - you can just lose the game due to luck instantly. There used to be games where I random geomancer (before I was washed up on this game), and the enemies random a bunch of random shitty heroes and it's just over. No point even playing the game out. Similar thing with Slark. Certain heroes demand that you counter-pick them, and in AREM you don't have the chance to counter-pick.

AREM is inferior to SDEM or Draft.

Carapace is one of the best spells in dota. Any ground aoe spells is a actually good for na such as shrapnel/kotl blast/jakiro ult/sky ult etc gives you a free stun on them. Na is one of the few heroes that can easily survive most bara ganks in the early stage in the mid lane.

The stun is weaker to lions for sure but with carapace u have a built in setup for your own stun.

Mana drain like you said its weak early for sure but has its uses such as sk/dusa but later on in the game it scales really hard vs int. A hero like silencer will melt in two mana drains from all the int he steals.

Ult is a just a stronger lothars i guess.

I also highly dislike the dagon build. Heres a game i had recently https://entgaming.net/findstats.php?id=12196106. Na should be played as a bait later on in the game and build utility/saves items. Euls is always great on him, solves mana issues and gives u another stun setup or saves vs heroes like voids/lc/axe. The rest depends on their lineup.

I like him alot personally and he counters alot of S tier lineups or at least doesnt let them have a free early game. Id personally put him a bit higher than C.

To solve his mana issues, I used to always get soul ring. It gives a little lane sustain and allows you to spam mana burn early if you are against an int hero.

But over time I have decided that cyclone is a core item for him. It gives him speed and another escape in addition to his spikes, plus nice mana regen.

Once you secure tranquil boots and cyclone, you then must decide what is best based on the enemies and how the game is going. If you have good carries, I would suggest getting another spell like sheep, orchid or simply sustain items so you can absorb damage for your better teammates. I have even gotten vanguard to help me as I have to dive and initiate.

If your team sucks or is all support, you might have to try to get damage so you can one or two shot enemies as you break vendetta. SnY or diffusal or even deso can be helpful.

But after your comment, I now agree his ult sucks. It either needs lower cooldown or slark like perma invis or something. Its basically lothars, which isnt game breaking at all.

Templar belongs in S Tier.

Refraction is a game changer