Best carry heroes in Dota 2 patch 7.34e

Dota 2 patch 7.34e is now in full swing and we’ll probably get to play on it for another month or so.

IceFrog is preparing the next major patch. Until then, we’ll have to make the best of this one. And it’s not a bad patch, all things considered. It’s a bit underwhelming, but it still fixed a lot of the issues that existed in the previous one.

The strongest heroes in the game are a lot more balanced and very few of them continue to wreck pubs. Your goal should be to find those heroes and then spam them to increase your MMR. In this guide, you will discover 10 of the best carry heroes of Dota 2 patch 7.34e.

1. Spectre: 54.9% WR

Spectre has been an amazing carry hero for a long time. She has all the features that you may want from a position 1 pick and the only vulnerability is the first 5-10 minutes. In most cases, by the time you’re level 6, you already have a high degree of self-reliance and can tell your lane support to leave so you can get more experience.

Just make sure you have good wards all around you and ideally around the enemy triangle, so that you can spot smoke ganks.

When you play Spectre, you play for the late game. That doesn’t mean you can’t fight here and there during the early and mid game, but it shouldn’t be your priority. And when you do fight, you want to do it using your ultimate.

That’s the biggest advantage when playing Spectre. You can farm a long distance away from your team and join them extremely easily for a kill whenever you have your ultimate available. And since Shadow Step has a 60 – 40s cooldown, you can do it every minute if your team likes to fight a lot.

When Shadow Step became Spectre’s ultimate and replaced Haunt, everyone assumed that it would nerf the hero. But the exact opposite happened. The truth is that Spectre doesn’t need more than a target. The cooldown is much more important. And now, instead of a 3-minute cooldown ultimate, you have a one-minute cooldown ultimate.

Spectre should always be built in a tanky way, using a Blade Mail. What you do after that is up to you. Some prefer Radiance, others Manta and Diffusal. But make sure you get yourself a Blade Mail because it’s absolutely amazing. It works really well in combination with Spectre’s Dispersion, making it twice as strong.

2. Wraith King: 55.5% WR

Wraith King is a very durable Dota 2 hero and he now works like a combination of Phantom Assassin, Terrorblade, and Broodmother. He is a terrifying carry to play against, and as soon as you see a good WK, you just want to pick the hero for yourself every game.

In the laning phase, Wraith King is a bit weak until level 5. After that he’s a monster because he has six skeletons that deal 34 damage each. That’s +200 damage without the +25% damage bonus against heroes. These summons last for 40 seconds and the enemy hero cannot kill them effectively. He is forced to run away.

In a way, whenever Wraith King uses his Vampiric Spirit, he’s like Undying when he uses his Tombstone. Against heroes that cannot kill the skeletons with AoE damage, this ability is very strong in 1v1 situations.

Ideally, you should also have a lane support that slows movement speed. A Warlock or anything that prevents a hero from quickly running away can set up easy kills for you.

Wraith King’s ultimate gives him two lives almost throughout the entire duration of the game. His passive gives him a very strong critical hit that is the equivalent of two extra attacks. And its cooldown is 4s. So if you attack a target for just 4 seconds, you get to deal 4 extra hits because you crit your first and your last hit.

Assuming that you have a decent attack speed, you will land the equivalent of around 10 hits in those 4s. That is why you should always build damage on this hero, not fancy stats and abilities. Go for a Blink Dagger, an Armlet and a Desolator every game. Only buy a BKB when the enemy team has powerful slows and disables.

3. Muerta: 49.4% WR

Muerta continues to be picked a lot because she is very strong in team fights. As soon as she pops her ultimate, everyone needs to run away. This ability gives her +70 – 150 attack damage and makes her untargetable by physical damage for 6 – 8s. And she can use it every 75 – 45s, which makes her unstoppable in the late game.

This hero has a long attack range that you can further improve with the right items. Add a bit of damage on top of it and you’re unstoppable. Melee heroes absolutely detest playing against Muerta. The biggest problem is that in team fights, if you engage, it’s hard to disengage. But that’s exactly what Muerta forces you to do with her ultimate.

Her other abilities make her even harder to kill and prevent enemies from escaping her wrath. Dead Shot makes heroes run away in fear. The Calling slows them down by 15% – 30% and silences them. And Gunslinger gives her a 20 – 50% chance to fire a shot at a secondary target, with heroes being prioritized.

A lot of lineups function only if support heroes stay close to their cores, helping them with various abilities. Muerta punishes that kind of positioning with her abilities, breaking groups of enemies extremely quickly and causing them to run away.

Muerta should always be picked against melee heroes with poor mobility and a desire to get the job done using right-clicks. Juggernaut and Sven are perfect examples. Ursa is also on this list, and the reason why he disappeared from the game completely probably has something to do with the rise of Muerta.

4. Lifestealer: 50.2% WR

Lifestealer received substantial buffs in recent patches and now he’s a total monster. His Feast deals 1 – 1.9% max HP as damage, which means that if the enemy hero has 2000 HP, you’re dealing an additional 38 damage per hit.

Add to that the 15 – 30% movement slow you apply with each attack thanks to Ghoul Frenzy and the 25 – 70 attack speed bonus that you get for 1.5s after each attack thanks to the same passive ability and you’ll quickly see why Lifestealer is a strong carry.

When you pair him up with Abaddon, this hero becomes insanely good thanks to the attack speed buff offered by Abaddon’s passive.

Lifestealer’s Rage gives him 15 – 18% move speed bonus for 6s, as well as 80% magic resistance. The debuff immunity he gets during this time is also really powerful. When you pick Lifestealer, you’re picking a hero that already has a 6s BKB.

Lifestealer’s ultimate is a bit weaker than that of other heroes, but it’s perfect for team fighting if you have a strong initiator like Puck or Axe, who can blink in and cause panic.

Lifestealer needs to be built to be a heavy damage dealer with excellent mobility. Whether you buy a Blink Dagger of a Sange and Yasha, something needs to be done to help him kill his targets. Armlet, Desolator, and Basher are also good on this hero.

5. Luna: 50.5% WR

Luna doesn’t have a spectacular win rate but she continues to be a very stable carry thanks to her strong laning phase and ability to farm the jungle quickly. And that includes Ancient stacks. Very few heroes can efficiently kill 4x or even 5x Ancient stacks. Luna is one of them and thanks to that, she can gain a lot of gold in less than a minute after she buys her Mask of Madness.

Nowadays, thanks to the option of disassembling some items, that MoM can then be used to build other, more useful mid-game items.

Luna’s two main abilities are Moon Glaives and Lunar Blessing. Both of them increase her damage output significantly. This hero is not as strong as Medusa when it comes to multishots, but she’s strong enough to farm quickly once she has a few core items.

Lucent Beam and Eclipse are not that amazing, but they still do a lot of damage and will prevent two-man ganks in the early game in most cases. Of course, if you’re playing a hero like Slark or Juggernaut, he is obviously not going to care about your ultimate. But most heroes do care about it until they buy themselves a Black King Bar.

One of Luna’s strongest qualities is her movement speed. This hero is one of the fastest in the game, moving at 325 MS during the day! This means that she doesn’t need powerful MS items to be effective at killing enemy heroes. What she does need, on the other hand, is a Dragon Lance. Because her attack range (330) is not very good.

6. Troll Warlord: 51.6% WR

Troll Warlord is on the rise again. His toolkit is really strong once you get to the mid game, and very few heroes can stop him in a 1v1. The ones that are slippery have the highest chance of winning. But the rest, even if we’re talking about Sven during his ultimate, can’t do much. Troll will Ensnare them and bring himself back to full HP using his items.

Thanks to his Berserker’s Rage, Troll has a lot of extra armor (7) and movement speed (45). If you buy even a little bit more movement speed and armor on this hero, he becomes extremely hard to kill with physical damage. In the early game, he’s one of the tankiest carries that you can play.

Troll also has a lot of attack speed thanks to his Fervor, which can be stacked up to 12 times. Each stack gives +30 AS, as long as you don’t switch to a different target.

Troll’s Whirling Axes slow movement speed of all enemies in a 950 range for 2 – 4s. They also deal a bit of damage.

Troll’s ultimate, Battle Trance, offers him a lot of lifesteal (40 – 80%), attack speed (140 – 200), and movement speed (25 – 35%) for 6.5 seconds. But you can no longer control your hero effectively and are forced to attack the nearest enemy unit within 900 range. Heroes are prioritized, of course, but it’s still unpleasant to not be able to pick your target.

This ability works well when there’s a single hero in sight, because the nerf is practically eliminated in those cases.

7. Phantom Lancer: 53% WR

Phantom Lancer is a hero that relies on his illusions to become very difficult to kill and completely deadly when focusing on a target. He is a bit weak against heroes like Earthshaker and Zeus, who can quickly kill illusions, but he’s very strong against melee carry heroes that don’t naturally buy a Battle Fury.

Even heroes like Templar Assassin, who deal a good amount of AeE damage, struggle against PL in the late game because his illusions become too strong to kill quickly enough. And after a few seconds, you’re simply overwhelmed.

PL’s core items include Manta Style, Diffusal Blade, Heart of Tarrasque, and even a Radiance. Ultimately, it’s up to you to build this hero however you see fit. But the objective is to be survivable and threatening enough to not allow the enemy side to fight you freely for more than a few seconds.

Everything about PL’s natural toolkit is designed to damage enemies, confuse them, slow them down, and provide escape mechanisms for himself. This hero is a bit weak in the laning phase, but quickly becomes a monster once you buy a Diffusal Blade, which you can do in less than 12 minutes.

8. Chaos Knight: 49.9% WR

Chaos Knight received massive nerfs in Dota 2 patch 7.34e. His base damage was reduced by 5 and his Phantasm now costs 100 – 300 mana instead of 75 – 175. On top of that, his Chaos Strike now gives him 70% less lifesteal against creeps instead of 40%. Needless to say, these nerfs decreased CK’s win rate by around 5-6%.

However, when used well, the hero still has a lot of the features that made him a terrifying carry. Most people would agree that CK should be played with an Armlet and Treads. But what you build after that is up to you. A Heart of Tarrasque is an excellent choice because it makes you very tanky and allows you to use your Armlet nonstop.

A Manta Style can also be good because it gives you a bit more mana to work with and gives you two extra illusions that can destroy heroes and buildings with ease.

You also have the Silver Edge option if the surprise factor is important to win team fights. A Blink Dagger and a Black King Bar wouldn’t hurt either.

In every Dota 2 match, it’s up to you to find the right balance between survivability and mobility. In a lot of cases, you’ll go with whatever allows you to kill a target quickly, before the rest of the enemy team can react to your actions.

CK’s Phantasms deal 100% damage, which means that your damage receives a 400% increase for the 30s duration of your ultimate, as long as your illusions don’t get killed. If you deal 200 damage, you will deal 800 damage for every Reality Rift and every subsequent hit. And since your Chaos Bolt stuns for 2s, that’s enough time to kill almost anything.

9. Drow Ranger: 49.3% WR

Drow Ranger received a small buff in Dota 2 patch 7.34e, but she was already strong enough to win games. Her toolkit gives her the possibility to farm really fast and gain a lot of damage and ability as time goes on. At level 12, she’s already a beast thanks to Marksmanship: 30% chance to proc 60 extra damage, and +40% agility in a 1200 radius.

This means that not only Drow Ranger but all of her allies receive a lot of agility as long as they can keep enemy heroes away from her.

Drow tends to have a decent laning phase thanks to her ability to slow movement speed, silence enemies, and knock them back. She can also clear waves very quickly with her Multishot. Later, this ability can be used to clear jungle camps, speeding up her farm tremendously.

Any hero hit with her Frost Arrows will struggle a lot, because the movement slow is 55% for 1.5s. Given her attack speed, you’re practically permaslowed in any 1v1 scenario, which makes it impossible for just about any melee hero to kill a Drow.

In the late game, Drow Ranger will triumph against most carries if she’s not too far behind in farm. The fact that she can compromise a target’s ability to get close or use spells is a huge plus that gives her an advantage in almost any situation. It’s enough for her to catch you once with Gust or Frost Arrows and you’re dead if you don’t have team support.

Drow players tend to buy Power Treads, Hurricane Pike, Silver Edge, Manta Style, and Butterfly. A Black King Bar is not a bad choice either.

10. Slark: 49.1% WR

If you need a very slippery carry hero that can destroy enemy lineups in long late-game team fights, Slark is one of the best. His main weakness is his laning phase, or at least until he gets his level 6. But after that, this hero is well-equipped to initiate and survive almost any team fight.

The key is to turn yourself into a target that cannot be killed before it can respond. If the enemy team can bring you down in 3-4 seconds, it will generally throw everything at you just to make sure you can’t escape. But if you’re survivable, you will no longer get targeted because everyone understands just how quickly Slark gets back to full HP.

Your allies will become targets and you’ll get the opportunity to lurk in the shadows, behind enemy lines, which is exactly what you want to do when playing Slark.

This hero is very slow in the first 15 minutes. He doesn’t farm that well, he can get caught, he can’t do much against AoE damage, and so on. But if you know how to not get destroyed in the early game, few heroes can stand up to you in the late game.

The item build you choose can make all the difference. Most players like to buy themselves a Diffusal Blade and an Aghanim’s Scepter. Other useful items include Black King Bar, Sange and Yasha, and Eye of Skadi. You can’t go for a purely offensive build when playing this hero because you risk getting killed before you get to attack and use your abilities.

The objective for any good Slark player is to avoid that scenario and make the enemy team feel like it can’t possibly bring you down in a fight without a perfect chain-stun.

Header: Valve