How to win with Warlock in Dota 2 patch 7.33d

Warlock is one of the niche support heroes that can do amazing things in a Dota game. His pick rate is just 5% but his win rate is 52.5%, which is pretty impressive.

Dota 2 players love Warlock for many reasons. He’s very strong in the laning phase thanks to his Shadow Word, and his Upheaval will make it impossible for targets to escape.

When paired with a hero like Juggernaut, Slark, or Ursa, Warlock tends to completely destroy the enemy offlaner. The logic behind such pairings is intuitive. When enemy heroes sense that your carry is in a position to fight 1v1 and exchange hits favorably, they will want to run away. But Upheaval makes their escape extremely slow.

And even if they do escape, you can just use Shadow Word, which deals 150 – 450 damage over 10s. The idea is to cast it early and then cast it again. Its cooldown is only 14 seconds, so you can easily cast it twice if you have enough mana and the fight drags on for long enough, which it should.

Warlock’s strengths

Warlock is excellent not just in the laning phase and not just offensively. He’s also great in team fights and can protect his carry by healing him with Shadow Word.

In big fights, Fatal Bonds will make enemy heroes take lots of damage from each other. If multiple targets that are bonded take damage from spells, each of the remaining targets will take a lot more damage.

When 4 targets are bonded and some AoE spell hits all of them, they practically all take double damage from that spell, which is the dream for a hero like Lina, Zeus, or Invoker.

This is one of the keys to playing Warlock: you should always pick him when you have a Mid that can cast powerful AoE spells, and a carry that is very strong in 1v1 situations. That will give you an edge both when laning and also when team fighting.

Warlock’s ultimate, Chaotic Offering, summons a powerful Golem that lasts for up to a minute. If you have Aghanim’s Scepter, it will summon two Golems. The Golem’s HP is 1400/2300/3200 and his HP regen is huge: 25/50/75. On top of that, you can also cast Shadow Word on him. The Golem can be further upgraded with powerful talents.

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