Why Ancient Apparition is a top support hero in Dota 2 patch 7.33c

Ancient Apparition is a very famous hero in Dota 2. And not only because of what happened at The International 2015, when Evil Geniuses won thanks in part to an epic Ice Blast into an Echo Slam that destroyed almost the entire enemy team in the Roshan pit. He’s also been used at lots of other tournaments.

Ancient Apparition is known to be the perfect anti-healer. And in the current meta, players enjoy picking heroes that can heal very quickly or have item builds that naturally enhance HP regeneration.

Against such heroes, Ancient Apparition can utilize an ultimate that’s quite reliable because of the large area it covers. Right now, AA has a win rate of about 53.5% and a pick rate of nearly 9%. These stats make him a top three support hero in Dota 2 right now.

If you don’t know how to play AA, you should start. In some cases, he’s the only hero that will help you to prevent a 20-minute defeat against an Alchemist coupled with an Omniknight and perhaps even a Legion Commander.

Ancient Apparition’s strengths

Apart from his formidable ultimate, which can prevent enemies from healing even when they are in their fountain and can be further upgraded by Aghanim’s Shard, Ancient Apparition provides a lot of utility spells to his team. His Ice Vortex will slow enemies down by 25% in a 300 radius area and decrease their magic resistance by 25%.

Chilling Touch increases AA’s damage by 40-160 and gives him 60-240 additional range.  That range can climb to 540 with the level 10 talent. This means that AA can literally attack targets from around 1100 units away. This is completely insane and makes even Sniper look weak by comparison.

Add to that the fact that AA can buy Aghanim’s Scepter to remove the cooldown of this ability and you’ll soon see why this hero could potentially be played even in the mid lane.

One thing that makes AA scary is his talents. All of them are incredibly good and the first two, which you get to access every game, are really useful. The one you’ll usually get at 15 is the +300 Cold Feet Breaking distance. This talent pretty much guarantees that your Cold Feet will stun the enemy each time for 2s.

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