Tier List for Items, Synergies & Units
Synergies
S Tier
- Knights (An insanely strong tank synergy, pair with a damaging synergy to cover their weakness.)
- Hunters (Not only is it high damage, but it’s more chances for on hit procs like basher or maelstrom.)
- Warriors (insane anti-physical capabilities, great at dealing with hunters.)
- Dragons (A lot of the dragon’s extra abilities dominate the battlefield, dragon knight requires the synergy now for dragon form.)
A Tier
- Mages (Incredibly powerful burst damage, can support other standalone heroes like techies or gyrocopter.)
- Trolls (The item now stacking allows trolls to benefit other allies significantly, increasing attack speed of allies significantly.)
- Warlocks (incredible team sustain, not so useful for mages.)
- Inventors (provides hp regen, but has trouble without other supplements.)
- Heartless (Their item also decreasing health regen is a huge boon to this alliance)
- Druids (Bigger units, faster, only need 2 of 4 to be level 3 to have all 4 of them be so.)
- Demons (50% pure damage allows the many powerful arrangements to snowball.)
- Humans (An insanely high chance to stop powerful enemies from casting their spells, doesn’t work so well against warriors though.)
B Tier
- Savage (Extra damage for those who need it, not too useful by itself.)
- Brawny (reliant on their item, but their item can win the game outright, at least until enigma 2 appears.)
- Scrappy (decent armor and HP regen, but it fails in the face of burst.)
- Elusive (relying on a % base chance isn’t a particularly reliable way to play the game, however does increase survivability of a lot of other synergies.)
C tier
- Assassins (Too reliant on their item to be any useful, requires a tanky frontline alliance.)
- Deadeye (Generally redundant as most low health enemies are already being focused down.)
- Primordial (generally a worse way version of the elusive alliance, with too varied a team comp to be useful.)
- Scaled (a niche pick only if you’re having distinct trouble with mages.)
- Shaman (good against creep waves, but creep waves aren’t particularly difficult to begin with.)
- Bloodbound (A gimmick that works early game, but falls off fast.)
- Demon-Hunter (too reliant on their item to be useful, the heroes that are in this class are generally weak in their own right.)
Heroes
These are ranked on individual ability primarily with minor consideration on how easily they can fit in to a synergy or team comp. I’m also rating them by tier because it’s easier that way.
Tier 1
- Axe (an amazing tank that can protect other frontliners.)
- Tinker (High early game burst damage, probably the tankiest spellcaster.)
- Batrider (Do not underestimate a batriders damage, especially if there are 2 of them.)
- Tusk (A solid crit stun, but falls off late game.)
- Enchantress (Early game the heal is insane, but late game she gets bursted down.)
- Tiny (A great AOE stun, but a bad race synergy.)
- Clockwerk (Probably the worst of the mechs, but is able to 1v1 extremely well.)
- Bloodseeker (A great assassin if he doesn’t get focused, but is normally countered by good positioning.)
- Shadow Shaman (The buff that allows the troll item to stack means that having all 4 trolls is much more powerful, therefor upping Shadow Shaman’s viability.)
- Warlock (His spell is his redeeming factor, it can completely save a unit or murder one if he gets it at a good time, burst ruins it though.)
- Drow Ranger (A far fall from grace, rather mediocre these days, but great synergy.)
- Bounty Hunter (A good burst, but is generally an assassin you only want for the scrappy synergy.)
- Anti-Mage (a lot of units can gain mana despite anti-mage attacking them, is completely underwhelming without strange bedfellows.)
- Ogre Magi (A cool tank for mages, but is slow to charge and requires a gimmick to deal damage.)
Tier 2
- Pudge (An early level 2 pudge will carry you through most of the early game.)
- Witch Doctor (An amazing early game CC ability, troll synergy while holding octarine core means a lot of casks.)
- Puck (Puck with a dragon synergy is basically slark from DAC when he still had shadow dance. if a bit less powerful.)
- Queen of Pain (Large AOE burst, demonic pure damage, fast mana gain.)
- Crystal Maiden (Useless by her self, amazing with mana hungry allies.)
- Juggernaut (Juggernaut is insanely tanky if you get forged in battle, but he dies quickly without the bonus health.)
- Treant Protector (Probably the second best druid, will live through many battles if you upgrade him.)
- Beast Master (The early game hunter tank, helps hunter viability significantly, especially with forged in battle.)
- Chaos Knight (Chaos Knight has a fair amount of trouble securing kills currently, but his stun is amazing for stopping other CC heroes.)
- Timbersaw (a decent tank with a high damage aoe ability, not really viable till level 2 though.)
- Slardar (His job can easily be done better by heartless synergies, only a good pick for naga players or 9 warrior strats.)
- Natures Prophet (More bodies, but also very vulnerable to being murdered by accident.)
- Luna (Too reliant on a powerful damage item to perform well.)
- Morphling (is outdone in damage by most other assassins.)
Tier 3
- Shadow Fiend (High damage, high spell gain, warlock synergy.)
- Viper (Dragon Synergy increases the survivability & damage output of viper quite significantly)
- Slark (if left alone for long enough, will shred the entire enemy team, make sure you have tanks for this guy.)
- Lycan (2 extra bodies as well as a free crit chance, huge amounts of damage and survivability.)
- OmniKnight (Tanky as hell, great with both human synergy or fall from grace, insane healing.)
- Razor (Large AOE damage, the most consistent primordial.)
- Sand King (Surprisingly underrated, a great stun and large damage when stacked with synergies.)
- Sniper (High damage with infinite range, beware of assassins.)
- Abaddon (A great tank with Great synergies, but Omniknight outperforms him.)
- Windranger (Her abilities line is thin, so is rather weak against spread out teams.)
- Arc Warden (Relies completely on refresher and crystal maiden for viability, but will destroy otherwise.)
- Lina (out bursted by most other mages, also rather squishy.)
- Phantom Assassin (A crit on a synergy that gets free crits, becomes redundant.)
- Terrorblade (Too reliant on strange bedfellows, also can get other powerful units killed when
ulting.) - Venomancer (The minions he summons don’t do enough to change a fight.)
Tier 4
- Kunkka (An amazing hero that scales in AOE size with levels, best CC.)
- Doom (Is amazing at taking out key problem targets, especially against mages.)
- Medusa (split shot does so much damage when combined with an entire team stun.)
- Dragon Knight (Now requires 2 dragons to be viable, but also gains an extra aoe damage and damage reduction ability, viability went way up.)
- Lone Druid (The best druid, the bear also deals damage to players.)
- Troll Warlord (normally requires troll synergy, insane damage output.)
- Necrophos (healing, healing and more damage, a great support.)
- Mirana (her damage output is not to be underestimated, that arrow will 1 hit a fair few units.)
- Keeper of the Light (Was nerfed pretty heavily, definitely only go with a proper mage comp now.)
- Disruptor (great at stopping spell casters, but is outdone by hard cc most of the time.)
- Alchemist (A good warlock for scrappers, redundant if you have heartless in your comp.)
- Templar Assassin (A strong hero, but very susceptible to CC.)
Tier 5
- Tidehunter (The second best CC, the other hunter tank.)
- Enigma (Consistent AOE damage, is liable to die if you’re not careful.)
- Techies (Several team comps likes the high damage output of mines.)
- Gyrocopter (basically a worse techies now that his mine does magical damage.)
- Lich (Great damage output, but is the least flexible out of all the fifth tier units, hard to use without items either.)
Items
Tier 1
- Embarrassment of riches (A must pick if you get it within the first 3 rounds, the versatility it allows you is absolutely insane)
- Brooch of the martyr (an item that stays strong even until the late game, allowing your main CC tanks like Tidehunter or Kunkka to get to full mana long before the enemy can.)
- Soul Sucking Syphon (A strong item for a strong synergy, the fact that it also allows spell damage to heal means that even a mage comp with a few warlocks could benefit from this item.)
- Chainmail (A solid survivability option early on, doubles the armor of a fair few heroes, increasing the time your tanks stay alive massively.)
- Blight Stone (A solid pick if you lack undead but also need more damage, doesn’t last so well into the late game, but will help you get through a physical wall early on.)
- Unstable Reactor (A great item to stack with health items and itself, as it adds +20% per stack.)
- Claymore (another solid early game damage item, slightly worse than blight stone due to the fact that you can’t amplify already high damage with this one.)
- Vitality booster (The ability to tank for knights.)
- Tranquil Boots (The extra health regen makes it a good item on early game tanks)
- Strange Bedfellows (A staple of the demon-hunter archetype, would be great, if demon hunters ever get buffed.)
- Gloves of haste (Can be used to speed up slow attack speed heroes, but generally it’s just better to try and grab the Troll global item and branch into using them instead of this if you can.)
- Cloak (by the time you need this you have access to better options in Hood or BKB.)
Tier 2
- Smuggler (Better items, faster, what else can i say?)
- Octarine Essence (Great for heroes who can gain mana fast but are limited by somewhat slow ability charge rates, heroes like witch doctor benefit from this especially well.)
- Blademail (Who doesn’t love the enemies hurting themselves, great for frontline tanks who are lacking a bit of damage.)
- Silver Lining (If you get this early on you can guarantee it is going to make you a good amount of money, and can still save your income somewhat if you lose a winning streak.)
- Coordinated Assault (Now that the attack speed stacks, this item skyrockets the amount of attacks you can do with a high base attack hero, like sniper.)
- Mask of Madness (Amazing on heroes with no abilities, rather mediocre anywhere else.)
- Arcane Boots (More mana for slower heroes by using a faster hero.)
- Brooch of the Aggressor (More mana for heroes who attack a lot, medusa and mages benefit from this quite significantly.)
- Forged in battle (Tough to get started, but it snowballs quickly if you get enough kills on your brawny units.)
- Aegis of the Immortal (Keeping winstreaks alive since release.)
- Unstoppable (The amount of survivability this brings is decent, but i find that units tend to ignore units when they’re in their unstoppable state.)
- Tooth and Claw (Don’t underestimate the bleed, it hurts, unfortunately, it is also counteracted quite heavily by healing.)
- Fall From Grace (With the wicked intent buff, this is more viable, but the human synergy is so good it’d be a shame to give up on it.)
- Completing the cycle (You’d preferably want your healing to be done before your units die, but it’s decent if you have a lot of frontline heroes.)
- Indomitable will (humans don’t really need the debuff resistance, as their silence already stops most debuffs and CC from happening, only really pick if you are facing an absolute ton of CC units.)
- Age of Chivalry (Most knights don’t stay close enough to your other units for them to benefit from this, so most of the time it’s better to pick up a more damaging item over this, as knights usually lack on the damage side.)
- Summoning Stone (Normally you don’t have enough units that summon other units to be worth it, only grab if you happen to be going for a summon as many things as possible build.)
- Blink Dagger (Basically turns any hero into an assassin, however, you could just get an assassin.)
Tier 3
- A higher class of criminal (better units, faster, allows you to really build for high level synergies due to the fact you get level 4 & 5 units so much earlier than those missing the item.)
- Hunter’s Focus (The amount of damage your hunters recieve from this item is insane, doesn’t even require a full team of hunters to benefit you greatly.)
- Check the bodies (More money, more levels, more merges.)
- Eye of Skadi (Absolutely amazing on assassins or frontliners who would rather take damage less often instead of surviving the damage they already tank.)
- Sacred Relic (A great utility damage item, literally just a better claymore, really allowing fast charging mages.)
- Dragon’s Hoard (Stacking these wins games outright, dragons are insane at the moment.)
- Vanguard (Great against lower level enemies, not so much against 3 stars.)
- Wicked Intent (Now that this item blocks HP regen, it is a must have for any team trying to push through regen heavy tanks, like Treant Protector.)
- Pocket Sand (A great tool for getting through spell heavy comps with assassins, but still doesn’t save them from their main counter, the tank heavy meta.)
- Mekanism (a great heal for any team lacking healing and has multiple frontlines.)
- Retaliate (usually if you have naga’s you’re choosing them for the CC, not to get hit.)
- Skull Basher (Great for fast attacking targets, but is outshone by other right click items.)
- Elusive Targets (Doesn’t stop enemy from gaining mana from taking damage, so a strong tidehunter still wipes you out.)
- Final Flash (Most mages tend to die before getting the extra ability off.)
- Hood of Defiance (Great against mages, not too useful anywhere else.)
- Font of creation (The units are extremely susceptible to CC, and are weak, only get with summoning stone.)
- Shaman Pluck (Too low a chance to actually proc in legit situation.)
Tier 4
- Friends and Family Discount (less gold spend, more money for you.)
- Black King Bar (The perfect item for your heroes who really don’t like being hit by CC.)
- Refresher Orb (Makes Arc warden a hero, also amazing for any hero with big CC abilities.)
- Radiance (The item for if you have too many tanks and not enough damage.)
- Pipe of Insight (A great item for team comps that like to stick together, like knights, but generally considered a worse BKB otherwise due to the lack of CC cancellation)
- Daedalus (provides raw damage but slightly less utility from other items, still the crit is insane.)
- Moon shard (If you have warlocks, this can easily replace Mask of Madness on heroes like slark.)
- Battlefury (High attack melee heroes now hit more enemies at once.)
- Dagon (Great for finishing off enemies before getting their abilities off.)
- Maelstrom (Usually outperformed by other AOE items.)
- Vicious intent (The extra damage this provides is redundant in too many situations.)
Tier 5
- Expanded Roster (Want to be level 11? now you can!)
- Desperate measures (Now that this item also boosts mana gains, it is a godsend to any low hp player, would recommend over expanded roster if your health is below 60.)
- Heart of Tarrasque (A great item with insane regeneration, if you have forged in battle, this is even more powerful.)
- Recruiter (an amazing item for getting that last merge you needed for that 3 star.)
- Assault Cuirass (You take less damage, they take more.)
- Shiva’s guard (The slow from this item is underestimated, great against physical lineups.)
- Bloodthorn (Good against fast mana tanks, especially if theres only 1.)
- Divine Rapier (Will throw your game away.)
