In a lot of guides I see blink dagger described as a core item for heroes like Lion or Shadow Shaman, for initiating a fight. However these heroes don't have an AOE spell like Sand King, Enigma, Tidehunter or Earthshaker and by personal experience, when they blink among 5 heroes they get destroyed, being so squishy. In fact most of the time they don't have the time to cast hex or their ult. Do you think that it is worth buying a blink dagger, considering it is pretty expensive (half the prize of Aghs).
Dota – Blink on squishy heroes
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Yes, its possible to deny heroes, but only under certain circumstances:
Friendly heroes can only be denied when they are under certain sources of damage over time, such as Doombringer's Doom. You cannot deny a hero who's low on health but not taking DoT.
How is gold assigned to the enemy team:
Denying a hero will prevent the enemy from gaining any experience or gold from the kill, but your ally will still lose gold from dying.
To deny a hero:
Most heroes can only deny a friendly hero by attacking them manually (one exception to this is Tiny, who can deny any friendly unit using Toss as long as they have low enough health).
First of all, see here what backdooring actually is.
Tier 2, 3 and 4 towers and barracks have backdoor protection, which causes them to regenerate 90 hp per second and take only 25% damage from illusions if they are attacked without enemy creeps nearby.
So in order to backdoor successfully, a building needs to be low enough to be destroyed in a single hit, or the hero needs to be able to make more than 90 damage per second which after added damage reduction(armor) from tower which is ~ 55%-65% depending on the tier...you would need around 240 DPS to make the minimum impact on the tower,and since enemy team will rush to stop you as soon as possible you will need a lot more damage.
This is generally very difficult for most heroes for most if not all of the game, with backdooring typically being a team effort,single-hit destruction or mostly beneficial ability or item on your hero.
Things to look for in a backdooring hero:
- High DPS - To overwhelm the BD protection you will need a lot of damage and attack speed, late in game many heroes can do it but earlier it makes for a big problem.
- Mobility - You will have to get to their base quickly as possible and/or unseen to avoid enemy team defending.
- Summoned units - They can be good way of backdooring since you don't have to put yourself in danger, but rarely have enough damage without hero contribution.
- Items - Boots of Travel, Shadowblade, Necronomicon, Manta Style, Helm of the Dominator, Mask of Madness or just a lot of pure DPS items.
Popular item choices to help you with this are Desolator(damage+armor reduction) and Necronomicon (DPS+extra creeps).
Some examples:
- Nature's Prophet - Teleport,spawn treants,DPS
- Lycanthrope - Very fast,DPS
- Lone Druid - Summoned bear deals a lot of damage to towers with his passive, DPS, tank
- Leshrac - Diabolic Edict deals huge damage to buildings if no nearby units
- Clinkz - Fast invisibility, DPS
- Troll Warlord - Only crazy DPS
- Phantom Lancer - Lots and lots of illusions, invisibility, DPS
- Death Prophet - Fast, ghosts can destroy buildings quickly
- Broodmother - Partial fast invisibility, broodlings, DPS
- Meepo - Can simultaneously defend and backdoor as needed using poof, DPS
- Warlock - Powerful golems that can tank and destroy
- Faceless Void - Chronosphere stops towers, DPS
- Chaos Knight - Fast, strong illusions, DPS
- Tiny - Huge damage, +75% to buildings with scepter
- Shadow Shaman - serpent wards
- Chen - Enchanted Creatures can tank and pack some DPS,depending which you take
- Enchantress - With DPS build and enchanted creatures to tank
- Razor - Eye of the storm does lots of DPS to towers since every hit reduces armor,with aghanims 2 storms can be active at the same time
Best Answer
Blink dagger is an excellent item on both Lion and Shadow Shaman. Even if neither of them have big AOE teamfight spells, a blink dagger is still incredibly useful.
For instance, if both teams are fighting and your team is winning the fight, you can save the blink (i.e. not use it to initiate) and just use your spells as normally in the fight, then blink forward and pick off a hero when they start to retreat.
If your team is losing a teamfight, blink is great for getting away. This doesn't mean to abandon your carry at the first sign of danger, but if fighting is useless, it's better to not die and feed extra gold and exp to the enemy team.
Another strategy that is very good but requires excellent timing is to position yourself vulnerably when a teamfight is about to break out, then blink to safety when an enemy goes on you. This can make the enemy heroes waste stuns and get out of position, allowing your team to win the fight.
Versus Aghanim's scepter, I would say to prioritize blink on Lion every time, and also on support/mid Shadow Shamans. If your team is doing a push strat where Shadow Shaman farms the safe lane, then rush Aghanim's in order to take down towers early.