INTRODUCTION:
Ok so I have been playing Venge for some time now and after a few positive comments towards the way I play Venge I decided to make a guide. This guide will be based around playing Venge as an early game roamer and late game ganker/initiator (you will also be a support hero throughout the game). This Venge build is not for pubs, this is for use with a competent team, without a good team this will not work.


Forum|Guide

Index:

1. Pros and Cons
2. Skill Build
3. Item Build
4. Playstyle
5. Boots
6. Other Items Worth Getting
7. Popular Items That Need Mentioning
8. Screen Shots
9. Replay Section
10. Hero Synergies

Pros and Cons

• A highly spammable stun
• Can reduce armour and give vision of enemies
• Can increase allies damage by 36%
• Great starting stats and good Strength gain (for a ranged hero)
• One of the best roaming heroes in the game
• Very item independant

• Low mana pool
• Fairly low hp
• Below average move speed
• Is very easy to get under leveled due to the roaming nature of the hero

Skill Build:


Back to index

Item Build:
Core:

Now I know what you are thinking, that is a really cheap item core, it only costs 2050 to complete it, well that is correct, it is all you really need to buy, the rest of your gold can be spent on regen items for your allies, buying chick/crow and buying wards. Due to the fact your main role will be swapping with an enemy and dying it seems fairly pointless to farm anything else so why bother, just get these few items and let the rest of the farm go to your team.

Starting Items:

Most teams will tend to avoid buying wards and chicken on 1 hero but i do not see any reason to avoid it with this hero, you are completely item independent from level 1, you only really need to carry some light regen items early game and you can always bring more on chick if needed, if you do have a hero who can buy the wards/chicken then your item build will look more like this.

or +
And remember, all regeneration items in the game are sharable, you can give tangos to an allied hero to use and you can use salve/clarities on the hero without having to give them to the hero, during your short stays in lane you will be doing this to make sure that your allies have a much easier time in the lane (more on this in the playstyle section).

Early Game:

During the early game your first focus should be upgrading the chicken (normally another support hero will do this with their starting gold) after the chicken is upgraded your next priority will be buying the next set of wards (placement for these wards will be covered in playstyle). After you have these wards you the need to farm (the word farm will be used as a loose term throughout this guide, 90% of heroes need the farm more than you) up your bottle and boots, bottle takes priority over boots, the reason for this is because bottle allows you to spam your spells so much more and boots are not really needed during the early game.

Mid Game:
and if needed
Congratulations you have reached mid game, if all has gone well so far you should be able to finish your power treads and also purchase even more wards. The Ring of Basilius comes in pretty handy, it adds mana regen and armour for all nearby allies (including yourself). The dust and sentries are for if you are against invisible opponents, you are a good hero for carrying these due to the fact you will always be present at teams fights, you do not need to spend your gold on other things, and you will almost always have at least 2 empty slots so you will have room for dust/sentries.

Late Game:

At this point in the game you wont be farming at all, you will be pushing, use the gold from towers/assist gold to buy more wards, also buy a few cheap stat boosting items such as bracers, a wand is also good, the bonus stats are useful and the amount of spells being cast at this stage of the game fills the wand fast (i know wand is normally got early game and im not saying an early wand is not an option, but if you dont have it, it is always worth getting, the bonuses are small but effective), also there a few more possible items that will be mentioned below.

Playstyle:
Ok so we have had a quick look at the skill build and item builds with some short explanations, now it's time to cover the actual game play, if you dont already know what roaming is I would suggest you read this. Ignore whichever idiot decided to add that boots as a starting item is viable for roamers, this is not the case with venge. You want clarities and salves/tangos at the start to help you regen after a gang. Also please take a look at this guide if you do not already know how to ward

Early Game: (click here for a brief description)
With early game play it is important not to roam from level 1, you will do poorly and stand a very high chance of getting severely underleveled, it is however an option for you and another stun hero to go to a lane purely for the purpose of First Blood and then go back to your lane afterwards, generally speaking you want to stay in lane untill level 3, this allows you to get a little but of creep gold, harrass the enemies in lane and possibly kill them, harrasing the enemies is something you should be doing at every opportunity you can find, a few attack and when they start going back just stun them and hit a few more times, it hurts a lot.

This early time spent in the lane also means that when you go ganging you will be able to reduce armour and give sight of the enemy rather than just stunning. It is imporant when you gang to always cast Wave of Terror first, this will mean all damage done to them in the gang will be increased, it also stops the possibility of them entering the fog just as you cast stun which will cause the stun to cancel. Also as long as you have allies with you and outnumber the enemies tower diving is a valid strategy at any point of the game, just make sure you run in first to soak up the tower damage, but make sure you do this smartly, only tower dive on an enemy you know you can kill, the reason you soak up the damage is because it's better if the carry hero can stay in lane and get exp rather than having to go back and regen.

Even though you will be roaming it is important to stay in lane for small bursts after you gang to get some exp (and maybe some creep gold if your carry is not in that lane), but try not to stay for more than 1 wave of creeps. Just because you are ganging does not mean that you have the right to all the kills, your main priority should be letting your carry take the hero kill, but dont make the common mistake of trying to hard to not take the kill and letting it escape, it is surprisingly easy to do when you start out and even though it forces the enemy out of exp range for a short while its always better to get the kill. Also if you get the opportunity you can easily block the enemies from running back very similarly to how you would block a creep wave, but dont go out of your way to try this, it is hard to do and not worth it unless you see a clear opportunity to execute this block succesfully.

In a nutshell:

• Harrass your enemy as much as possible whilst in lane
• At level 3 start roaming.
• Try not to stay in lanes too long, your main focus should be ganking

Mid Game:(Click here for a brief description)
During the mid game phase you will be doing pretty much the same as early, the only difference is your allies will now be ganking with you rather than you ganking alone whilst your allies are sat in lane. You want to be the one initiating the fights, you want to be first in to absorb any stuns they throw at you, this helps your team so much if you get stunned instead of them. Make sure that you cast Wave of Terror just as you are running in to provide the negative armour buff and give full vision dont cast it too early or you will scare them off and wont get any kills, stun whichever target your team has decided needs to be focussed first.

Whilst in between lanes you want to be constantly casting Wave of Terror into the fog, try to aim it where you think enemies may be lurking (such as neutral camps/rune spots) but you do not want it sat on cooldown for long periods of time, this is wasteful because it is such a game changing spell when spammed properly.

If possible cast Nether Swap on the main target so he is stuck in the middle of your allies straight away (not really a great idea at level 6 because it's only 600 range but you may be able to pull it off, its only really once you have 900 range at level 11 that it becomes truly effective), but make sure you remember to hit him with Wave of Terror so he takes bonus damage, ignore all other enemies who may be around and run straight back towards the swapped hero to make sure you can stun him, he is afterall your main focus and most likely the strongest hero on the enemy team, once he is down the others should die without much difficulty

In a nutshell:

• Keep roaming but try to gang with allies
• Initiate with Wave of Terror and Nether Swap
• Stun the main target with Magic Missile
• Cast Wave of Terror into the fog whilst changing lanes, you may reveal a hero to kill

Late Game:(Click here for a brief description)
This is the stage of the game where you become the greatest possible support for your team not only do you have the ability to give vision and reduce the armour of enemies, you also have the ability to give 36% bonus damage to all allied units and the ability to single out the strongest enemy hero and get him killed without his team having the slightest chance of saving him.

During this stage of the game your teams teamplay will be of the utmost importance, they will need to be organized to take out the swapped target in a minimal amount of time and get to you in time to stop you from dying so they can still benefit from your aura. After you have swapped there will be very little you can do to keep yourself alive due to the fact you will be in a 1v4 situation, you just need to hope that you can stall your death long enough for your allies to save you.

It is not the end of the game if you die after swapping, you have in fact just taken out the strongest opposing hero so your team already has a distinct advantage in this situation. just try and make sure to hit your Wave of Terror before you die so that you give the -5 armour to the enemy heroes so you will still be helping your team even whilst dead.

Dont worry too much if you die after swapping, i know your team will lose the Command Aura but you will have a fairly short respawn time due to the fact you are a low level and your opponents have just lost there strongest carry so your team will be against a few support heroes and a semi carry, they will not actually need the Command Aura now but if you can survive somehow after swapping it will be best.

In a nutshell:

• Your aura helps your team just by you being present
• make sure you hit Wave of Terror asap to help your team even further
• swap with the most powerful enemy so he dies and makes it easier for your team to end
• dont worry if you are not dealing a lot of damage, The 36% bonus damage will more than make up for it with the damage your carry heroes can deal
• dont worry too much if you die after swapping, even though your team loses the Command Aura they will only be fighting the weaker heroes on the enemy team so it balances itself out

Back to index

Boots:
Boots of Travel
Boots of Travel are a bad choice for Venge, your role is clearly not to be farming and the 2200 needed for the upgrade is just too much when you compare it with a 900 gold upgrade for Phase Boots and a 950 gold upgrade for Power Treads. whilst the big ms and the teleport ability are attractive i would say that both Phase Boots, Power Treads and Boots are all better options for Venge, these will be explained below.

Phase Boots
Phase Boots are a perfectly valid choice for Venge, you will have a movespeed of 365 normally and 408 whilst phased, this can be useful in catching up to enemies to land your stun, it is only 500 range and can be hard to cast sometimes due to your below average base movespeed, the phase ability is also good for chasing/escaping, it will give you a clear movespeed advantage over any hero with either Boots of Travel or Power Treads and the phase ability lets you walk through units. Whilst I would avoid buying Phase Boots myself on Venge I would not completely rule them out as an option because we can see they are perfectly viable as a choice.

Power Treads
A quick overview on Power Treads is that they are my boots of choice for venge, they are usable in so many different situations and also very good value for gold, I will now split the Power Treads into 3 sections, 1 for each attribute. Also remember to switch them to Agility when you use bottle so you Regen a higher % of HP and Mana, although its pointless to do this in the middle of a fight because 3 seconds of reduced HP/Mana whilst regening is not a good thing.

Strength: Ok so the advantages of these power treads are pretty obvious, you gain 190 HP, this is very useful for venge because you do not have fantastic HP, this will help a lot in absorbing damage from both towers and spells, we already know that venge is a support hero and what better way to support than taking even more damage that could have been dealt to the carry, the longer it takes them to kill you, the longer it takes for them to kill your team. i normally leave my Power Treads set to Strength most of the time whilst im playing.

Agility: You are an Agility hero so Agility Power Treads offer you an extra 10 attack damage, whilst most of the time you will have the Power Treads set to either Strength or Intelligence it is important to have them on Agility some of the time, for example - you have just killed the entire opposition and therefore there is no one left to be killed or to kill you, you clearly dont need the extra HP to survive or Mana to cast spells, whilst the damage and attack speed bonuses offered by Agility Power Treads are minimal they definitely do help in taking down towers, so Agility is a viable option for certain parts of the game.

Intelligence: The intelligence Power Treads will be used mainly whilst initiating, the 130 Mana the offer is 5 mana short of a Magic Missile and Wave of Terror combo, this is definitely worth having, after you have cast your spells its best to change back to Strength for the extra survivability.

Boots of Speed
Now some games it may not be going well and upgrading your Boots may stop you buying wards and other support items, wards should always take priority over your boots and sometimes you may not be able to upgrade them as fast as you want. Staying with Boots of Speed is a perfectly fine option in some games, you will be hurting your team more if you neglect the wards just so you can upgrade your boots.

Back to index

Other Items Worth Getting:
Vladmir's Offering
I know Venge is a ranged hero and will not benefit from the lifesteal but if no other allies have bought this then it is a good option, the bonus damage from this goes well with your own aura (you now give a total of +51% bonus damage to allies) the armour bonus and mana regen is always useful, and the lifesteal will benefit all melee allies (including creeps), not to forget that you may have bought the Ring of Basilius earlier in the game anyway.

Ancient Janggo of Endurance
This is a great item for the Vengeful Spirit, it offers Strength and Intelligence, both of which Vengeful Spirit needs. It also goes well with Venge's Command aura, with this item you will be giving nerby allies attack and move speed along with the damage from your own aura. Definitely worth getting most of the time.

Urn of Shadows
Urn is definitely a good choice for Venge, whilst it is not necessary I would say it is always worth buying if no one on your team has one, you will always be present at gangs thus allowing easy charges for it, it has a 950 cast range, this is perfect for stopping those low HP heroes from escaping, just Wave of Terror to get vision and cast urn, also it is a great item for healing up your team after a team fight to continue the push.

Vanguard
Vanguard is one of those items that goes well with venge, it helps with the suicidal nature of the hero as you stand a higher chance of coming out alive after a swap, it has a nice easy build up and does not cost too much, this is definitely a very good item to get after your core if you can manage to farm it.

Poor Mans Shield:
I would give this item a yes, it helps a lot, or course Vanguard would be the better choice but there will be some games where you know you are not going to finish Vanguard, this would be your next choice.

Diffusal Blade
This item is always useful, the purge is very good for helping finishing off targets, the feedback is good and it is generally a fairly good items on all heroes, the only problem is the price will cause you to steal farm from other heroes and the fact that you will often die before you can make sufficient use of it. Also be careful when using this, it removes the Wave of Terror effects from your target.


Popular Items That Need Mentioning:

Lothar's Edge
Whilst i would avoid getting this item at all cost i know lots of people like it, it offers a good way to escape after swapping with enemies but for me i really dont see the point in getting it, other items can work so much better. And why would you want to farm 3400 for it? surely your carry could make better use of the 3400 gold if you let them farm it instead.

Stygian Desolator
This is a very common pub item, it goes well with Wave of Terror and increases your dps significantly, but there is one word that should stop you getting this item support, if you want to carry/semi-carry please go read another guide, this one is not for you.

Aghanim's Scepter
This item is a luxury item for Venge, the hp and mana bonus is very attractive the upgrade it offers is also fairly attractive, the only problem is that you do not have the mana pool to be spamming Nether Swap. Most games you wont be getting this item, it would take far too much farm from your carries and should only be got if the game is going extremely well and you suddenly find yourself with stacks of gold.

Force Staff
Force Staff can be good given certain circumstances, often when i play venge these cicurmstances do not arise often enough to warrant me making Force Staff a priority, whilst it can be good after some other items because the active ability is useful and the INT bonus it gives helps a lot with spamming your spells i would only reccomend getting this if you are doing quite well in terms of farm and you need an extra escape mechanism otheriwse the gold is pretty much waste. All in all it can be useful but dont make it a priority.

Soul Ring
Now whilst i can not argue that this item is great for all early game roamers (including Venge) i would avoid getting this item on Venge, you will only get any real use out of it early game and due to the low farming nature of the hero it will delay your other items too much. You can very easily manage your mana and do fine without this item. Late game it will be almost completely useless, the last thing you want to do is reduce your hp by 150 before swaping into the middle of 4 heroes.

Back to index

Screen Shots:
Harrasment:
I attack ES a few times to reduce his hp.


As he is running back to avoid the harrasment i stun him and attack a few more times

After the stun hits and i have attacked a few more times he has around half hp.

Sven stuns ES and i attack him


Just as the stun is about to end i cast my stun


This allows sven to draw first blood at level 1


Wave of Terror: (pushing)
I am running from bottom lane up to top lane for a gank, on the way i see that mid lane is pushed a bit and has no heroes in it.


I cast Wave of Terror on the creeps to make them weaker, this allows my creeps to kill them easier and i dont have to delay my gang by counter pushing mid.


My creeps have no problem killing the scourge creeps now and the tower is unharmed whilst i am still free to gank top lane.


Wave of Terror: (assisting from a distance)
As you can clearly see i am out of range to attack or stun crystal maiden but i can still help my ally by giving vision and reducing the armour.


This armour reduction has allowed Razor to finish off crystal maiden.

notice how i dont actually get awarded with an assist for this, Wave of Terror will not add an assist if it is the only thing you used to help, its still worth doing though.

Wave of Terror: (killing escaped targets)
Me, SK and LOA try to kill sven


He starts escaping with really low HP


Manages to survive Death Coil with around 5-10 HP


He thinks he is safe after running past the tier 2 tower but i finish him off with a Wave of Terror


Tower Diving:
We chase Shadow Fiend from the river to the mid tower and Razor gets him to very low hp


He thinks he is safe using his bottle at the tower but i pop out from the trees and stun him


Shadow fiend proceeds to die and both the carry heroes are unharmed due to me taking the tower damage, i also did not lose much hp due to not having to spend long under the focus of the tower.


Back to index

Replay Section:

Click anywhere on the replay parser to download the replay.



Back to index

Hero Synergies:


All these heroes can reduce armour either with a spell or an aura, these work very well with Wave of Terror for increasing dps on the target. I would however say that the best hero would be dazzle due to the fact he reduces armour in a huge AOE and also increases allied armour, Shallow grave can help you a lot with surviving after a swap to keep the aura for your team and he is generally speaking a very good hero to have in a team fight.


Laning Venge with a strong multi target stun is very good and strong strategy for a lane combo, in this case you would actually max your stun first due to these combos being built around lane dominance and constantly killing your opponents early game with burst damage. You would still max Wave of Terror After stun but aura would be left until level 10 in these situations. A good starting lane like this can cause your lane partner to pretty much free farm and can easily screw over the other team when done correctly.

Back to index

Please remember this is just a guide, it is not a manual. please do not think this is the only way to play Venge, you should vary parts of this guide to suit your specific playstyle.