Underrated Dota 2 items: Mekansm

Mekansm is one of the most underused items in Dota 2. It costs just 1775 gold and provides 275 HP in a 1200 radius to every single allied unit. Its cooldown is 50 seconds, so you can practically consider it to be an additional powerful ultimate ability.

In addition to its Restore ability, Mekansm also gives +2.5 HP regen to all allies in a 1200 radius passively. On top of these benefits, it gives +4 armor to the hero that owns it. This adds up to a lot of bonus HP in team fights.

If we assume a 10-second fight duration in a compact area and include all of the item’s benefits, Mekansm offers around 1800 HP to your team. That’s because it offers 275 HP per member, plus around 25 HP per member thanks to its HP regen, plus around 300 HP for the carrier thanks to its armor bonus.

Against heroes that deal lots of AoE damage and can easily lower the HP of 3-5 members of your team, Mekansm is an amazing option. For the price it costs, it gives you an enormous amount of HP. And if you combine it with a Pipe of Insight, your team will quickly become incredibly hard to kill. Add to that some healing abilities from your supports and you’re unstoppable.

Mekansm tactics

Mekansm is an excellent item to buy on offlaners like Tidehunter, who can go for a team-oriented build composed of Arcane Boots, Mekansm and Blink Dagger. All of these items are easy to purchase in the first 15 minutes and you don’t need anything more than them to be effective for the first 30 minutes of the game.

The reason why Mek should be bought by offlaners and not by support heroes is that offlaners can get it much faster. But you could also opt to ask a greedy support to buy the item and tell the offlaner to buy a Pipe of Insight instead. With this double protection, you will be ready to fight very quickly against all kinds of hero compositions.

Based on what the enemy team can do, Mek is a useful or very useful item. It’s never a waste because you’re never in a position where you don’t need instant HP regen in a large area. Having this item allows you to push towers quickly and gain a huge gold lead in the early game.

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