May 25, 2019 - 1. Like many great poets, Auroth just wants time to write, but the Winter Wyvern's life is full of interruptions. The epics of the.
Posted by9 months ago
Archived
Backstory, I’ve spammed Wyvern for the past two months in ranked, first picking the hero with a 63% winrate, getting me from ancient 3 to ancient 5. I think Wyvern is possibly the best defensive support in the game, which I’ll explain below. I’m by no means an expert, but I thought I’d share the tips that I’ve picked up along the way. You might disagree with what I say and that’s fine, I’d love to get better at the hero so I welcome any advice. Anyway, let's dive in:
Arctic Burn:
This single skill is why I honestly believe Wyvern to be one of if not the best defensive support. The trade off that many defensive supports have to make is helping their team whilst staying in position. As a shadow demon, if I stay too close to a carry in a teamfight, I’ll likely be targeted and killed. If I stay too far away, I’ll be safe, but will take that much longer to help a teammate in trouble. As a Wyvern , by staying near trees or cliffs, you can be close enough to your team to save them whilst easily evading enemy heroes. Your punishment for this skill is an abysmal move speed and low hp - positioning is everything. Abuse flying movement for things such as:
- Warding: By using the terrain and trees to obscure yourself, you can minimise the chance of being seen by enemy heroes or wards when warding. For example, when pushing a side tier 3 tower, it’s possible to stick to the trees and place a ward behind enemy lines.
- Escape: Find some cliff or trees which you can fly over to escape.
- Surprise: Wait in the trees by a teammate whilst they farm. When the enemy ganks, fly out of the trees, heal them, use your ult on grouped enemies, ideally your team will see the opportunity and TP in. Use your splinter blast as your ult wears off, and already the fight is half won for your team.
- Going uphill: Blindly walking onto higher ground through choke points is often deadly. If you need to scout, find a cliff nearby and fly up there instead.
- Mobility: Quickly reach teamfights and dying teammates instead of walking around terrain.
Otherwise:
- This gets levelled first, and is maxed second.
- In the early game, this is a fantastic harassing tool, and should be used when off cooldown unless you think you’ll be going for a kill in the next 50 seconds.
- In the early to mid game it should be reserved more for getting kills (as well as for the reasons above), as harassing becomes less important but the cooldown will still be high.
- Make sure to apply the debuff to every hero possible.
Splinter Blast:
- Max this skill first. Take the first point at either level 2 or 3 (see below - cold embrace).
- Be wary of using this skill in the laning phase as it will heavily push the lane. Only use it if harassing is more important that maintaining lane equilibrium (e.g. if you’re in a hard lane), or if you’re looking to kill.
- If you’re harassing in lane with this skill, generally use it on the range creep as enemies approach to last hit, otherwise they’re more likely to avoid the splinters.
- Use to quickly farm the jungle or lane creeps.
- Abuse this skill in fights due to its huge cast range.
Cold Embrace:
- Cold embrace is typically skilled last, taking only one value point. I do this at either level 2 if the lane is hard, or more typically at level 4 after two points in splinter blast for more kill/harass potential.
- Due to the low mana cost, make sure to spam this ability in the laning stage whenever you or a teammate needs healing. Just make sure they’re far enough back that the enemy won’t get a kill once the duration is over.
- In teamfights, it can be hard to know when to use this skill. There’s a fine line between saving and sacrificing, which largely depends on the enemy heroes present. Ideally you could track exactly which enemies heroes are alive, where they are, what their cooldowns are, etc., but in the heat of battle this can be difficult. A simpler way of deciding is to look at the enemies at the start of a game and decide which heroes you shouldn’t use cold embrace around (e.g. ancient apparition, mirana, invoker etc.). If these heroes are alive/nearby in a teamfight, don’t use your heal. This isn’t a perfect solution but helps to simplify things whilst you get used to the hero.
- If your teammate is stunned or generally unable to perform actions (silenced, hexed etc.), it’s a fairly safe bet to use this.
Winter’s Curse:
The most obvious way to use your this skill is on a squishy hero next to a hard hitting carry. However, this is often not possible. Enemies don’t always group up nicely, especially in higher brackets. Without items like Aether lens and Blink, enemies will often see you slowly walking up and react (however this can be mitigated by using arctic burn and flying over trees). If you hold onto the skill too long it may hinder your team more than having used it early on. The perfect ultimate often doesn’t exist.
Because of the relatively low cooldown of the skill at only 85 seconds, don’t be afraid to use this skill for a range of opportunities. You can use it to:
- Allow you or a teammate to escape.
- Catch someone out of position and buy time for your teammates to arrive and get a kill.
- Isolate key heroes as they try to enter a teamfight.
- Waste BKB durations on carries.
These are often ‘safer’ options than using it to secure kills directly in a hectic teamfight, as your team might waste crucial items and skills if not timed properly. This is not to say that you should never use it for the intended purpose, just that you should weigh up your options and appreciate the skill for its BKB piercing lockdown purposes.
Items
The item build I typically go for aims to boost your defensive skills. This is by no means the only way to build Wyvern, but it has done me well.
Starting items:
- Courier
- 2x Observer
- 1x Sentry
Wind lace (your movement speed is trash - this is essential)- 2x Tango
- 2x Clarity
Core items:
After continually buying wards and building arcane boots, I tend to buy two out of the following three items. Which items I prioritise depends on the enemy lineup. They have the benefit of massively increasing the chances of saving teammates, or surviving yourself.
- Force staff: Buy if enemies lack gap close/you need to escape a small area (e.g. Riki, Ursa, Sven)
- Glimmer cape: Buy when enemies have high magic damage. If used on someone in cold embrace, they are highly immune to enemy damage. (e.g. Zeus, Tinker, QoP)
- Euls: Useful to save yourself against silence, inescapable combos, or disrupt enemy heroes (e.g. Invoker, Drow, Clinkz with orchid).
Luxury items:
- Blink: Incredibly useful for dropping your ultimate on unsuspecting groups enemies, targeting key backline heroes in teamfights (e.g. Zeus, Sniper), as well as reaching dying teammates faster. However, the item (I believe) should come after at least one defensive item unless its desperately needed. After all, if you get caught out of position, a blink can’t save you.
- Aeon disk: Only pick it up later in the game, and only if you’ve found that you’re being consistently and unavoidably nuked down in a few seconds (e.g. Faceless Void, Tinker).
- Boots of travel: This can be a nice pick up after a few items, running out of slots for a TP. You can respond more quickly to teamfights, and push out waves near your base before joining your team for a push.
- Gem: Given your survivability, this is a worthy pickup should you need it, even if just for dewarding.
- Aether lens: Fairly strong, however it’s not core on this hero. The range of your spells are already fairly large. The times I have built it has been after a few defensive items, disassembling my arcane boots for the energy booster.
Notable mentions:
- Aghanim's sceptre: I don’t believe this is a viable item. You generally won’t get the farm, and can’t justify spending 4200 gold and a slot on an item that simply gives you permanent arctic burn - which only has 8 second uptime and 12 second downtime.
- Ghost sceptre: I will buy this in the minority of games where I desperately need to avoid physical damage [e.g. Juggernaut, Clinkz], as cold embrace already blocks physical damage and this item isn’t team focused.
It’s honestly hard to say which skills are best levelled for Wyvern, as most of her talents are viable.
Level 10: +60 Damage / +90 GPM
- +90 GPM: Not much to say, a decent boost to your income given you have the lowest farm priority.
- +60 Damage: Whilst you are a support hero, +60 damage is a serious deal. For reference, that’s the same damage as a sacred relic, a 3800 gold item. I would suggest taking this talent if you feel that you’ll ever have the opportunity to get a few hits in on enemy heroes during the early-mid game, either in ganks or team fights. The extra damage means you might actually be able to kill off a fleeing hero yourself. The cherry on top is that you can farm much faster when you get the opportunity, meaning you’re not quite sacrificing 90 gpm by choosing this talent.
Level 15: +500 Night vision / +350 HP
- +500 Night vision: I always choose this due to its utility. With arctic burn’s extra vision, your scouting abilities become incredible.
- +350 HP: At level 15 you should have the skills and items to avoid death generally, unless you’re severely out of position in which case you’ll likely die anyway. Nonetheless, choose the skills that help you win. If you think that the extra health will be enough to keep you alive, then go for it.
Level 20: -5s cold embrace / +15% Arctic burn slow
- -5 Seconds cold embrace: This is the only talent which boasts a much higher winrate (+2.6%) than its counterpart on dotabuff. The utility can’t be denied, as you’re able to dish out insane healing and mitigate huge amounts of physical damage in teamfights.
- +15% Arctic burn slow: I don’t think this should be skilled. Maybe versus easily kiteable heroes (e.g. ursa, sven)?
Level 25: Splinter blast 2s stun / +1.5s winter’s curse duration
- Splinter blast 2s stun: Choose this if you feel you’re able to hit lots of heroes with this skill in teamfights (e.g. versus melee heavy lineups).
- +1.5s winter’s curse duration: This just boosts everything about your ultimate. If you’re getting good curses off that game, or find there are heroes you really need to isolate and ignore (e.g. Sniper), get this. Seven seconds time wastage is no joke.
General thoughts
- This hero should be played as position 5 - you don’t need many items to contribute, with the key to playing this hero being positioning. Regardless, if you position yourself well, you can minimise your deaths, maximise your assists, and get yourself some decent items that will further protect you.
- Feel free to first pick Wyvern . Yes she does have counters, but they won’t absolutely ruin your game, and better for you to be countered than your carry.
- Constantly keep an eye on the map and have a TP ready. Your greatest strength is counter initiating on unsuspecting enemies. Even better, try to guess where enemy heroes are and be in position already, reacting immediately to their ganks.
- Stay off the map. In a similar way to how a Pudge or Clinkz instils fear and forces 5 manning by remaining unseen, you can make enemies scared to ever gank your teammates by consistently punishing them for it.
35 comments
< Winter Wyvern
- 4Tips & Tactics
- 4.2Abilities
Gameplay[edit]
Playstyle | |
---|---|
is a powerful nuker who also provides utility in her abilities, making her a well-rounded support. A hard support who does not require much gold to function, she protects her safe lane carry with Cold Embrace, as well as rotating to gank with the slow from Arctic Burn and the damage of Splinter Blast. Unlike most supports, she becomes a dangerous threat in the late game, since she can turn her enemies physical attacks against themselves with Winter's Curse while locking them down for a long duration. | |
Pros | Cons |
|
|
Ability Builds[edit]
Generic Winter Wyvern | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 20 | 25 |
Talents[edit]
Hero Talents | ||
---|---|---|
2s Stun | 25 | +1.5s Duration |
-5s Cooldown | 20 | +15% Slow |
+500 Night Vision | 15 | +350 Health |
+60 Damage | 10 | +90 Gold/Min |
- This attack damage talent is added as raw attack damage, so it does not benefit illusions, and is not affected by most percentage-based damage increasing or reducing effects.
- Gold granted from the talent is unreliable gold.
- The night vision talent does not counter any vision reducing effect.
- The health talent increases maximum health capacity, and keeps the current health percentage.
Tips & Tactics[edit]
General[edit]
- Unlike most other intelligence supports, Winter Wyvern possesses respectable strength growth, making her quite resistant to damage. However, her poor base agility also means that she has low base armor, and can benefit greatly from purchasing items that provide her with bonus armor.
- Winter Wyvern has extreme cast range for all of her abilities, allowing her to impact ganks and team fights from the back lines without endangering herself. Purchasing mobility items allows her to position herself for casting her spells more easily.
- Winter Wyvern has poor base movement speed and a slow turn rate, making her quite sluggish. She also has short attack range and slow projectile speed, as well as poor base damage, making her physical attacks quite ineffective at harassing when not boosted by Arctic Burn.
- She needs good positioning and planning to make good use of her abilities. Therefore, buying mobility items helps her positioning better to use abilities or escape death.
- Much of Winter Wyvern's damage output comes from her basic abilities, which are costly but have low cooldowns. So, securing a reliable source of mana regeneration allows Winter Wyvern to keep on the move and enter teamfights ready to use her full arsenal at all times.
Abilities[edit]
[edit]
- Arctic Burn gives Winter Wyvern flying movement while boosting her attack range and night vision, as well as causing her attacks to burn a fraction of enemies' current health every second.
- Prioritizing Arctic Burn may help make Winter Wyvern far more mobile and better able to counter enemy actions.
- Reducing the cooldown and mana cost allows Winter Wyvern to have Arctic Burn ready as the situation requires, and helps keep her mana pool full for using other abilities.
- Furthermore, the increased slow can help get kills during ganks, and inhibit enemy movement during team fights.
- In the laning stage, take advantage of Arctic Burn's increased attack range, damage over time, and movement speed slow to harass the enemies away from the creep waves.
- Use Arctic Burn at the start of team fights to slow and burn enemy heroes.
- Arctic Burn deals damage based on a percentage of the target's current health, meaning it deals more damage the more HP the target has.
- Use Arctic Burn to evade enemy ganks by flying over impassable terrain, preventing them from easily pursuing.
- When initiating for a gank or team fight, Winter Wyvern can soar over trees and ledges/cliffs, attacking the enemy from unexpected directions.
- When fighting, use Arctic Burn's unobstructed movement to keep Winter Wyvern among trees and high in the cliffs so enemies cannot reach her, increasing her survivability. As a result, she can keep using her long ranged abilities from safety.
- Arctic Burn's flying movement, high attack range, and increased night vision range make Winter Wyvern a formidable nighttime ganker.
- She can spot enemies from far away, allowing her to choose an advantageous approach angle with her flying movement.
- She can attack from outside most enemies' vision range, perhaps putting their on cooldown for at least 8 seconds.
- Winter Wyvern still possesses ground vision with Arctic Burn so she cannot see up high ground or through trees.
- If going up high ground, try to take a side approach from an unexpected angle, using trees for cover as necessary, rather than directly up a stairway where enemies could be waiting.
- Arctic Burn does not stack nor refresh with new attacks, therefore you should use the ability on different enemy heroes whenever possible. However, purchasing an does allow subsequent attacks to refresh the debuff.
[edit]
- Splinter Blast fires a shard of ice at a target, splintering upon impact, and damaging and slowing all other nearby enemies.
- Splinter Blast does not affect the primary target at all, i.e. not dealing damage or slowing, so Winter Wyvern cannot use it against lone targets.
- If trying to damage and slow an enemy, aim Splinter Blast at a secondary target so that the splinters will bounce to the primary target.
- Max out Splinter Blast early in the game to nuke enemies.
- The low cooldown and high area damage allow Winter Wyvern to clear creep waves in seconds and deal area damage in fights.
- Maximum level Splinter Blast can kill ranged lane creeps in a single cast, giving her strong pushing and counter-pushing capability.
- In the early game, use Splinter Blast on ranged creeps to harass the enemy when they are trying to get last hits. If you are using it on melee creeps, enemies may see the projectile incoming and move out of the way.
- If creep positioning permits, try to target Splinter Blast on a siege creep, as their 80% magic resistance makes the secondary damage ineffective against them anyways.
- However, the siege creeps usually sit well behind the rest of a creep wave, meaning that unless the melee creeps are aggroed and brought closer, a Splinter Blast targeted on a siege creep will likely only hit the ranged creeps.
- Splinter Blast allows Winter Wyvern to hit enemies up to 1700 range away, keeping Winter Wyvern far away from dangerous fights.
- Splinter Blast's initial projectile has a fixed 1 second travel time beyond 650 range, and cannot be disjointed, so it can always catch enemies.
- Furthermore, the secondary splinters that damage and slow enemies in an area cannot be disjointed either once locked on, allowing Winter Wyvern to splash damage at enemies in many situations where other damage nukes cannot.
- Because of its long range and low cooldown, Splinter Blast is good for breaking an enemy's .
- In particular, it can clear the way to use Winter's Curse, and come off cooldown shortly after the taunt.
[edit]
- Cold Embrace disables a target ally but nullifies incoming physical damage and heals a sizable fraction of their health.
- As a percentage-based heal, Cold Embrace will not heal much in the early game when heroes have lower health pools.
- However, a value point in Cold Embrace still grants physical damage immunity, perhaps good enough to save Winter Wyvern and allies from ganks.
- Cold Embrace's physical damage negation may save a teammate who has been caught out of position and is being focused down by enemy attacks.
- When the enemies are disabling an ally, use Cold Embrace to not only heal and negate physical damage, but wastes the enemy's disabling time as well.
- Cold Embrace does not protect from secondary attack effects, magical, and pure damage. Consider the following examples that explore the weakness of Cold Embrace.
- keeps stealing attributes.
- keeps destroying mana—but deals no damage—priming for dangerous magical .
- and still deal their magical and pure damage components, respectively.
- and deal huge magical or pure damage to finish off Cold Embrace targets.
- can be used well with Cold Embrace as it blocks magical damage while leaving the target still able to receive other buffs such as , and so on.
- Put Cold Embrace on creeps to prolong pushes by wasting enemy tower's attacks, allowing all other allies to continue damaging it.
- Use Cold Embrace to tank .
- Misusing Cold Embrace on allies in key moments in team fights will disable them, rendering them useless to contribute important abilities and attacks.
- A good time to use Cold Embrace is when Winter's Curse is disabling the enemies, as your allies cannot damage them anyway.
- Combining the physical damage protection of Cold Embrace with strong magic resistance from other sources such as will greatly heighten the target's chance of survivability.
[edit]
- Winter's Curse fully disables an enemy and applies a taunt to their nearby allies, causing them to attack the target with increased attack speed.
- Winter's Curse allows Winter Wyvern to turn the enemy's power against themselves, forcing their farmed hard carries to use their powerful physical damage output against their own team.
- In particular, enemy auras and powerful damage and attack speed buffs (such as , , and ) can cause then to connive in their own destruction by turning such abilities into liabilities should they ever clump up.
- Winter's Curse will lock down the target through spell immunity and cannot be removed by strong dispels.
- If an enemy carry activates , Winter Wyvern can still disable them and force their allies to attack them, wasting the enemy's spell immunity while dealing damage to them.
- Winter's Curse cannot taunt enemies that are spell immune, so they will not attack their allies if they activate spell immunity prior to Winter's Curse. Depending on the situation, try to lock down the spell immune enemy over adjacent teammates.
- Try to exploit its long cast range and prioritize it on a key enemy that has powerful teamfight abilities or powerful utility items.
- If possible, use it on a squishy enemy who is standing next to their farmed hard carry to increase the odds of getting a kill. Even if a kill cannot be secured, delaying a key enemy from participating in a fight for a short duration can make the difference between victory and defeat.
- All affected enemies will take no damage from Winter Wyvern or her team for the duration of Winter's Curse, so do not waste abilities or attacks.
- Instead, get into better positions during Winter's Curse, getting ready to catch survivors and clean up.
- Winter's Curse on multiple enemies can set up for allied heroes to land their own area abilities, such as , , , , and .
- The taunt still applies to anything passing through the radius after Winter's Curse has been used, whether nearby enemies or the disabled target itself.
- If the target is facing the right direction, try to use on them in order to push them within proximity of their allies and bring more units within the radius of the taunt.
- Many passive abilities do not work against allied units, so do not expect enemy Phantom Assassin to inflict strikes on her teammates.
- Examples of common effects which do not trigger on allies: most attack modifiers (critical strike, cleave, and all active attack modifiers), , , , and .
- Examples of effects which do react on allies: all damage block, all sources of damage negation and reduction, , , , , .
- In the case of abilities like or , the reflected damage or passive Quill Sprays do not hit allies, but enemies still. The only exception is , which damages allies.
- All bashes, excluding and , works on allies. Examples include , , .
- Some item attack modifiers also work against allies. Examples include , .
Items[edit]
Starting items:
- sustains health in the laning stage to deal with harassment.
- replenishes mana early, important since Winter Wyvern's abilities are expensive in the early game.
- is cheap and gives a small amount of attributes, can build into a or , and use with Tango for more healing.
- ferries items to friendly heroes.
Early game:
- gives Winter Wyvern burst health and mana, which can allow her to survive just long enough to cast one more important spell in a teamfight.
- will help improve Winter Wyvern's lackluster movement speed, particularly useful in order to get in position or chase/escape with Arctic Burn.
- also provides cheap movement speed, great for poor and slow supports.
- gives Winter Wyvern additional attributes, armor, and mana regeneration. The active can be used alongside Cold Embrace to heal teammates, or adds yet more damage to her arsenal of nukes.
Mid game:
- gives Winter Wyvern additional attributes and increased charge storage for a cheap price, which can sometimes be the breaking point that allows her to get her ultimate off against the enemy.
- improves Winter Wyvern's movement speed while giving her a bigger mana pool and a way to replenish both her mana and that of her allies.
- is a cheap but powerful utility support item in Winter Wyvern's hands. It can be cast on herself to allow her to invisibly approach the enemy during initiations, or can be targeted on an ally under the effects of Cold Embrace to fortify their magic resistance on top of nullifying physical damage.
- is natural upgrade of and gives her additional heal.
Late game:
- gives Winter Wyvern more attributes and armor, and the active gives her another method with which to heal teammates on top of Cold Embrace.
- restores massive amount of health and mana to Winter Wyvern and her allies. Mend also removes negative debuffs that may hinder her from using abilities.
- is a cheap multipurpose item that greatly increases Winter Wyvern's utility. The intelligence and health regeneration give her more mana and better roaming capability, and the active can help her to position herself more easily for casting spells, particularly to get Winter's Curse off on an important target. It can also move allies to safer place during Cold Embrace.
Situational items:
- gives mana and mana regeneration, as well as increased cast range to allow usage of abilities further away from dangerous enemies.
- provides area stun and damage to follow Winter's Curse as it disables and clumps up enemies together.
- is a cheap purchase that increases Winter Wyvern's ability to cast her spells. It provides health and mana regeneration, allowing her to roam more independently. The burst mana allows Winter Wyvern to cast her spells more readily, and the health cost can be recouped through Cold Embrace.
- gives Winter Wyvern may powerful bonuses for a comparatively cheap price. The armor and attributes make her much tankier, while the mana regeneration helps keep her mana pool topped up. The active can be cast on a Winter's Curse target, weakening their armor and increasing the odds of killing them.
- is a cheap but very powerful utility item that gives Winter Wyvern many strong benefits. The intelligence and mana regen greatly improve her ability to cast her spells, and the additional base movement speed makes her more mobile and able to position herself for casting her disables. The active can be cast on herself for temporary invulnerability and debuff removal, or used as an additional disable to take an enemy out of the fight or pin down an enemy during a chase/escape.
- is a great way to increase Winter Wyvern's mobility and allows her to more easily initiate with Winter's Curse.
- applies basic dispel on target to remove some debuffs and gives them a shield to reflect single target spells, which may deter enemies from using abilities on the target.
- allows toggling of Arctic Burn and refreshing the debuff with following attacks, a great item to control enemy heroes from long distance.
- greatly improves Winter Wyvern's intelligence and provides all-around attributes as well as plenty of mana regeneration to fuel her costly spells. The hex is a powerful hard-disable that greatly increases her ability to contribute to ganks and teamfights.
Retrieved from 'https://dota2.gamepedia.com/index.php?title=Winter_Wyvern/Guide&oldid=1763551'