Study

The assassins of Dota 2, these guys can burn through an enemy’s health in a few horrific, often firey seconds. If you like big numbers and are obsessed with your kill/death ratio, these are the heroes for you. Remember that nukers are fantastic early and mid game, but bow down to their farmed carry brethren when the late game arrives. The best thing you can do is repeatedly kill or disrupt an enemy carry, or failing that, vapourise those squishy supports.

A floating pyromaniac who decided to light her own hair on fire. Fire also comes from her: hands. Legs. Mouth. Pretty much everywhere, causing enemies - heroes and creeps alike - to melt at an extraordinary pace.

Lina’s all about the combo. Hitting her Light Strike Array AoE stun into the Dragon Slave line-nuke is the key, but has challenges. Both spells have cast times and the delay period on LSA is significant, requiring some prediction of enemy movement. If you can nail it in the early game, chances are somebody’s falling over.

She scales late with the help of her passive, Fiery Soul, which increases her move and attack speed with every spell cast. With the right items it makes her an absolute force, but mana-greedy for constant casts. Her ult’s no help, Laguna Blade being one of the more expensive spells in the game - with good reason, given its power to one-shot targets on anything approaching low health.

Lina is the quintessential nuker, and often quite strong in the meta. She’s one to perfect in the mid-lane.

An aptly named hero for his role, Bounty Hunter excels at dispatching his enemies while making a tidy profit from doing so. He has a kit designed to frustrate and kill. Invisibility is a huge advantage when it comes to ganking successfully, and Shadow Walk does just that. Positioning is everything, making sure you don’t cloak in your opponent’s vision so they don’t know you’re coming.

The passive Jinada means your first attack on an unsuspecting enemy hero is huge damage. Follow it up with the mini-stunning Shuriken Toss and they’re as good as dead in the early and mid game.

His ultimate, Track, is why he manages to provide value beyond this. Not only does it give you vision of the enemy hero, regardless of invisibility, it also increases movement speed of you and your allies. The main draw is the bonus gold your team receives for killing enemies affected by Track. It’s the snowballiest ability in the game, with kills between levels 6 and 10 being ludicrously effective. It even lets you get back into otherwise lost games with smart pick-offs.

Just remember: Track first, stab second.

He, er, isn’t a lion. He is actually but a man, thankfully with some of the more powerful spells in the game. Big damage and disables are Lion’s calling card, with an ultimate that has even higher single target damage potential than Lina’s Laguna Blade. Finger of Death not only has the best ability name in Dota, but can break four-figure damage in a single-cast, not even counting for the small AoE provided by an Aghanim’s Scepter. Beaten only in cool pick-off factor by his Heroes of Newerth counter-part who gets to do it with a single pistol shot to the head, Finger is the best way to kill people there is.

It’s supported by a suite of abilities that stop enemies moving and drop their HP almost as fast. Earth Spike is a line-AoE stun that does decent damage and stops an opponent doing anything for what will feel like an eternity. While your own right-clicks are unlikely to be inflicting a lot of pain, any allies nearby can take full advantage. Plus, poor positioning by opponents and a wider-than-it-looks hitbox means you can hit multiple enemies with one cast and it feels. so. good.

Hex doesn’t have that potential, or the damage, but does disable a single target for much longer. Transforming an enemy into a harmless critter, they can do nothing but slowly hop away. Timing these two disables to get the maximum amount of time your target has no options is key and massively frustrating for them. Remember you can kick this off just before your allies arrive to help out as even at level 1 it’s more than three and a half seconds of vulnerability.

Mana Drain holds all this together. Usable offensively to take the mana of an enemy hero, more commonly you’ll target a ranged creep to refill your own pool passively. It lets you use more abilities, more often without spending gold on mana-rejuvenation items. Like using a lot of spells and being basically useless once targets have Black King Bars? Lion’s the sadly-not-lion for you.