Is Radiance Broken in Dota 2 Patch 7.35c?

Radiance has been a very important Dota 2 item for a long time. It’s been used by carry heroes, offlaners, and even midlaners from time to time.

In Dota 2 patch 7.35c, Radiance is a very powerful item because it now offers excellent features for its cost. In fact, it might even be broken on some heroes.

Why Radiance is so powerful in Dota 2 patch 7.35c

Radiance offers 55 damage and 20% evasion. On top of that, it also offers 60 damage per second in a 700 radius around the carrier and an additional 15% evasion that gets applied as a debuff to all affected enemies.

This means that your opponents will miss not just you but also your allies 15% of the time. That’s a substantial increase in your effective HP. The total amount of evasion you get from the item is 32%. That’s roughly 1 attack out of 3. If you also have armor on top, the physical damage you receive is further decreased.

The ideal scenario is one in which you have around 34 armor and 32% – 50% evasion thanks to all of your items, including the neutral ones. Because that build essentially makes you 400% tankier against physical damage. Or, in other words, it decreases enemy damage by 75%.

It costs a lot less to become very tanky than to become offensively powerful. A hero that buys lots of damage will usually lack other things, such as magic immunity or the ability to escape certain death.

That’s why most players don’t like hyper-aggressive builds and tend to buy a Black King Bar, a Blink Dagger, and other items that make their heroes more well-rounded.

That creates a great opportunity for you. If you can simply buy a Radiance and a lot of armor, you’ll be nearly impossible to kill in the mid portion of the game. Add to this a bit of magic resistance and you’re a tank with farming capabilities and offensive potential thanks to your abilities and Radiance DPS.

A hypothetical scenario

Just imagine a Tidehunter who blinks in having a Radiance on him, a Cloak, and a Plate Mail. Combined, all of these items cost less than 8000 gold. This means that a good Tide player will generally have them by minute 20 in many cases. Apart from them, all he needs is a pair of Arcane Boots and a Blink Dagger. The Cloak can be upgraded to a Pipe of Insight.

What gives Radiance builds potency is the farming speed they give you. Once you own this item, you can farm much faster thanks to the AoE damage. If your hero has AoE damage on top of that, you can quickly become a better farmer than your mid or your carry in the early stages of the game.

Or, if you choose to build Radiance on a mid or carry hero, it will greatly improve your ability to get your other items.

Battle Fury or Radiance?

In the past, players used to buy Battle Fury on a lot of different carry heroes because it gives you the ability to farm faster and sustain yourself while killing jungle camps. But now that the gold difference between Battle Fury and Radiance is just 600 gold, it makes a lot more sense to just buy yourself a Radiance.

This build makes your hero a lot harder to kill and it also provides some benefits for your team as well. In team fights, the DPS you output can quickly become overwhelming.

If the battle goes on for long enough, that 60 DPS could mean 600 damage against each target that’s located close to you. If you have 3 enemy heroes nearby, that’s 1800 damage in 10 seconds.

Radiance builds work very well in combination with powerful slows and other disables, especially if the enemy doesn’t have a good escape mechanism. A Venomancer on your team or a Shadow Shaman could do wonders. Just have a simple way of keeping targets immobile and they will take enormous amounts of damage over time.

The primary weakness of the Radiance build

Radiance is not very expensive but the items it is composed of are not fun to buy. If you purchase a Talisman of evasion for 1300 gold, you will gain 20% evasion but that’s not what you want to do in most cases because it doesn’t speed up your farm.

The ideal thing to do is to buy damage as early as possible and then mobility, so that you can go from camp to camp really quickly.

But Sacred Relic costs 3400 gold and provides just 55 damage. There are lots of other items that can be bought in smaller pieces and provide much better benefits for that cost. This means that when you’re buying Radiance, you essentially need to wait for the whole item to be ready before you can reap the benefits.

In many cases, that could be a 10-minute wait in a game that’s high tempo. So what you want to do is to make sure that you won’t get overrun while working on your build. This is often a major challenge.

However, if you have the capabilities to build a Radiance by minute 15 or at least 20, and you’re confident in your teammates’ ability to stall the game and not lose a lot of key towers, then a Radiance build could be a great idea. Once the item is built, the advantages it provides are extraordinary.

Heroes that are suited for a Radiance build

There are many heroes on which a Radiance would work really well. Just think of a tank with great offensive capabilities, such as Bristleback. Having a Radiance on this hero will make him very powerful. His Goo slows movement speed considerably, which forces enemies to stay very close to you for a long time.

When you get attacked, the 32% evasion gives you a major boost against physical damage. Bristleback is already hard to kill. If you further reduce your opponents’ physical damage output by a third, that will make them think twice before attacking you.

Bristleback’s damage output is largely AoE thanks to his Quill Spray. Adding more AoE damage on top of it and of a different nature (magical instead of physical) can give your playstyle a big boost.

Being the kind of hero that needs to be killed in the first 5 seconds of each fight or else everything goes wrong is a huge advantage. Of course, it makes your job a bit harder because everyone will want you dead. But if you have a good teammate who can keep you alive, or if you simply have excellent positioning in fights, your win condition will be quite easy to fulfill.

Just stay alive for long enough and all your enemies will die. When you own a Radiance, time usually passes in your favor in team fights.

Keep in mind, however, that Radiance is heavily countered by builds that offer high magic resistance and high HP regen. If you’re playing against a Pipe of Insight, your damage will be mitigated.

Other heroes that should consider a Radiance build include:

• Ember Spirit
• Broodmother
• Lone Druid
• Alchemist
• Bloodseeker
• Lifestealer
• Sand King

Header: Valve