How important is Dispel in Dota 2

So what do you already know about Dispel in Dota 2?

Dispel is the ability to remove status effects. Status Effects are statuses that affect you or creeps. Dispel can remove bad statuses from you or your teammates as well as good status (buffs) from enemies. Dispel removes good status from rarer enemies, but the dispel can be activated with shop-bought items.

There are very powerful buffs that enemies can get from hero skills, runes or items, and knowing which can be dispel and why it can be dispel is important. Speaking of hero skills, dispelling buffs like Empower or Bloodlust can turn the tide of the game. Even a simple dispel buff like Sven’s Warcry can make a big difference in combat.

Similarly, removing the opponent’s haste or double damage can turn the game upside down. But more importantly, smart dispel can help you ignore things like Glimmer cape, Ghost Scepter, Eul’s or both Aeon Disk and Force Staff.

There are very few ways to dispel enemies in the game. You can buy Eul’s and Windwaker, as well as Nullifier and those are all items we can use on the enemy to dispel. Nullifier is the most advanced dispel, as it continues for a certain amount of time, but this is an item that depends a lot on the situation of the match. Take Necrophos and Pugna for example, these are nearly impossible to kill heroes in the right situation, requiring a Nullifier to counter them.

Enchantress, Invoker, Oracle, Shadow Demon, Doom, Sven, Troll Warlord, Brewmaster are the only heroes in the game that have a dispel move that can be used on an opponent. Among them, Sven needs to invest more Aghanim’s Shard, and Troll must reach the green stick.

We have another cumbersome option to dispel: through the Helm of the Dominator by dominating Satyr. In general, dispelling enemies in Dota 2 is rare because they are strong. Meanwhile, dispel on teammates is not like that.

There are four distinct defense options for utility heroes: Eul’s, Lotus Orb, Guardian Greaves, and Aeon Disk. There are three great options for carry with more than just dispel functionality: Manta Style, Satanic and Black King Bar. Dota 2 has more than 20 heroes with defensive dispel built in and are virtually unusable when silenced, but they’re still effective for dealing with other effects.

In general, almost everything is ok. Heroes are picked by skill sets to handle in certain situations. Items purchased depend on what hero you are facing. Satanic, the newest member of the dispel family, somewhat helps carry handle status effects without having to rely on BKB.

However, what’s wrong with the current patch is that it’s easy for players to skip equipping themselves with the dispel ability when needed. Instead, they focus on items that increase DPS, farm speed, and support/offlane on active items instead of investing in Lotus Orb for carry, or they wait until 37 minutes to put up Eul’s to fight Orchid. That’s because of the presence of Flicker, a neutral item that can be dispel with a cooldown of only 5 seconds (patch 7.30), or Stormcrafter and Witchbane (patch 7.30).

Take for example the hero Silencer, instead of having to think complicatedly like: “Wait for Manta/BKB/Lotus/Satanic to be used and then turn on silence so that the enemy carry can’t break the silence”. Now, the player’s thoughts will then be simpler as follows: “The opponent has a Flicker, why should I pick Silencer?”. Same goes for many other support heroes: almost every silence is useless, almost every Disarm is useless, almost every slow is useless. Basically, most of the support kits are useless, causing the controversy about Neutral Item to lose the importance of support more and more.

All in all, it shows how important continuous dispel is in the game.

Big Brother

The article will talk more about Dispel’s eldest brother: it’s Strong Dispel. This is a mechanism that is not exploited much. While Basic Dispel can solve almost any small problem, like movement/attack slow, silence, disarm, Strong Dispel can handle all of them and more importantly hard disable: stun and hex .

The game only has 7 sources of Strong Dispel that can be used on allies: Legion Commander, Abaddon, Oracle, Omniknight are all available, and Grimstroke can get Strong Dispel for Ink Swell by going to the Shard. Weaver’s upgraded Time Lapse is also theoretically Strong Dispel. The new name on this list is Chen patch 7.30, which comes from Hand of God but requires Chen to have a green cane.

They work best for dealing with lingering stuns, like Mirana’s Arrow or Beastmaster’s Primar Roar. Legion Commander is quite an interesting case. Although not a support, but Legion Commander possesses one of the strongest support moves in the game: AoE Press the Attack level 25 can completely reverse Reverse Polarity. Not to mention it also heals and has spell immunity potential (if on Shard).

Many heroes also have Strong Dispel for themselves such as Ursa, Troll Warlord, Abaddon, Slark, Tidehunder. They allow them to free themselves from the stun. However, you should note that Ursa, Troll, Abaddon cannot use their own Strong Dispel when silenced, hex (Abaddon’s Borrowed Time can be activated by itself but cannot be activated manually when silenced/hex) . Likewise, they cannot be used if Fear is attached.

Note: Fear can actually be dispelled with Basic Dispel, so you can remove its effect from allies using Lotus Orb. Meanwhile, Taunt from Ax, Huskar, Legion Commander and Winter Wyvern cannot be dispelled by anything and is considered the ultimate disable.

As you can see, when playing against heroes that have Strong Dispel for themselves, silence can be more effective than stuns. For example, when encountering Abaddon, Break+Silence may allow the team to bypass Borrowed Time entirely, while using Stun+Orchid may be enough to kill Ursa, as well as the Troll Warlord. Unless of course they have Flicker.

So did you find this article interesting? Did it help you discover something new for yourself? Please share in the comment section below.

According to dotabuff

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