Outworld Devourer—Return to the Meta
Throughout the history of Dota, many heroes have been considered overpowered and to a certain degree it is normal—some patches are going to favor certain heroes more. Very few, however, have ever reached the degree of strength [missing hero: outworld-devourer] once had—in the last year only 6.83 Sniper could potentially boast the same degree of popularity and success. Today we’ll discuss the return of OD into pub and pro metas and what changes have resulted in his rise to the top.
Reading the Changelogs
The hero has been substantially reworked in 6.86. Players were at first cautious about OD losing a substantial amount of Intelligence growth as well as changes to the way his spells worked—the numbers did not seem right and the hero was unheard of until later changes.
In the 6.86—6.86c transition, the hero received a series of extremely strong buffs to the [missing skill: outworld-devourer-arcane-orb-5391], where the intelligence steal went from 0/1/2/3 to 2/3/4/5, as well as getting an increased duration. This has put the hero onto the radar for many players—once again he was a dominating force in mid, who could potentially leave the enemy without mana. He could also out-cs/deny most opponents with the help of now static 4-second duration [missing skill: outworld-devourer-astral-imprisonment-5392]—a change which was underlooked by players who simply refused to play him initially.
Little by little the community has adjusted to the changes, resulting in several new builds for the hero and a popularity spike in higher MMR brackets:
Metadata
The metadata for the hero is among the most interesting ones. His win rate peaks in the lowest MMR bracket at 53.06% slowly falling to “near-perfect” 50.09 in 5k+ games. The pick rate has an inverse trend, where it starts off at 8.50% and rises up to 17.35% in top games.
These trends can be explained in a variety of ways. The hero has a limited amount of natural counters, many of which are somewhat more complicated—
Anti-Mage, 
Nyx Assassin, 
Pugna etc. need some understanding of the game and decent mechanical skills to be used effectively. At the same time, this limited amount of counter-heroes are all exceptional at dealing with Outworld Devourer. These heroes take away from his main strengths and turn them into weaknesses—with high intelligence and massive mana pool he is an ideal prey for them. It is unsurprising that 5k players are generally more prepared in the drafting stage and more flexible in their hero choices.
The negative win rate trend can also be explained by the fact that the hero is somewhat easy to play. There is a high return on the skill of the player, but the general concept is easy enough and does not require heavy micro or multiple button-presses, as is case with the 
Invoker, for example.
The positive pick rate trend can be easily explained by the higher degree to which high-MMR games follow the professional meta. The hero has made quite an appearance in several tournaments so far, the last of which was MDL, where he went 23-16 across 39 games—a very respectable result for any hero. It is worth noting that in a competitive environment there are more ways to protect an easily-counterable core—Captain’s mode offers more tools in the drafting stage and the effect of it is underrated by many high-level pub players.
Overall, the hero in his current state seems quite strong in games where he does not get hard-countered. Once again, flexibility of the players and their ability to play a multitude of heroes is rewarded in this patch—keeping in mind these exceptionally strong “glass-cannons” in the drafting stage is important.
Skill-build
Looking through the most popular skill-builds for the hero is somewhat baffling. While the majority of professional players generally stick with a single value point in Astral Imprisonment, most pub players max it out first.
Moreover, pub players generally tend to undervalue the effects of Arcane Orb, sometimes getting a single value point in it until later levels.
Professional players on the other hand tend to max out [missing skill: outworld-devourer-essence-aura-5393] and Arcane Orb roughly at the same time, giving higher priority to both, more often than not even skipping ultimate at level 6.
We are in no position to tell you how to play the hero, yet we can still provide arguments in favor of both builds and discuss their usefulness.
The pub way
Astral Imprisonment used to be the go-to build, when the ability stole intelligence, instead of dealing damage. In its current state, it deals 300 damage in a decent AoE, which is normal for a level 7 hero. Its scaling also offers lower cooldown, all the way down to 10 seconds for a total uptime of 40% in terms of team-fight utility “disable”.
What it does not offer, however, is the flash-farming potential players might be seeking. 10 seconds cooldown on a single nuke will not let the hero take stacks effectively, especially in the current patch.
The level of synergy between Astral Imprisonment and other abilities Outworld Devourer has is also miniscule. This build is best suited for a game where the start is quite rough or you are at risk of being shut down. It is slightly more reliable and offers more than a failed attempt to snowball with a professional build.
The pro way
The only build for the hero present in the pro-scene revolves around maxing out Essence Aura and Arcane Orb as early as possible, with a potential value point in Astral Imprisonment.
This build offers better harass in lane, where each hit is going to set back the enemy more. It also doesn’t take away from the mid dominance aspect if Astral Imprisonment is taken at least once. On a 22 second cooldown, it can be used once every wave of creeps, won’t unnecessarily push out the lane, and provides an option to contest the rune.
This build also scales better into mid-game and requires less levels total to reach the potential snowball state—the limiting factor on -5 intelligence is a lot stronger early in the game.
The Arcane Orb also synergizes better with the ultimate—[missing skill: outworld-devourer-sanitys-eclipse-5394], since each hit with maxed out Arcane Orb will increase the damage Eclipse deals by 80/90/100 on the target you’ve hit and 40/45/50 on other targets. With multiple hits it is clear why this has a much higher damage potential than maxed out Astral Imprisonment.
What this build does not offer, however, is the ability to farm jungles early on. Not in the sense of flash-farming, but the general, slow process of taking neutral creeps out for gold and XP in case you get harassed out of lane or lanes are not safe.
It also offers less utility in teamfights—the hero becomes a pure damage dealer. It is generally a better option, but while the strategy behind the draft in pro games is set in the initial stage of the game, it might not be the case in pub match-making. It can be the case your team will lack utility and AI build would offer more.
Item Choices
The resurgence of the hero was also followed by several new item-builds.
The previous go-to build of 
Force Staff into 
Black King Bar is still present and offers the good net result of high utility and decent damage, while giving decent amount of health. This is by no means an inferior build, but it is certainly less interesting and exciting than the new way.
Drum of Endurance has been found out to be an excellent pick-up for the hero. As a potential snowballing machine, OD desperately needs stats for less gold. Previously, it was not uncommon to see him build several 
Null Talismans, but Drums are more conservative to the item slots and also give heavily underrated speed passive/active. On a hero with an excellent starting MS of 315, it is even stronger.
Next “new” item choice is 
Blink Dagger, which is extremely effective in a multitude of scenarios. It is decent as an initiation tool for the hero, as well as a chasing one, but what a lot of people do not realise is the synergy it offers when combined with Astral Imprisonment. Becoming invulnerable for 4 seconds means that you can almost always blink out when surrounded by enemies, not unlike 
Puck—one of the most evasive heroes. It will also disable blinks on surrounding enemies, making the escape cleaner.
These two “core” items are generally followed by the usual Black King Bar and 
Rod of Atos, which has proved itself to be a good pick-up on snowballing/tempo intelligence heroes. We have seen 
Lina utilize it effectively in the previous patch and with the new “Accuracy” buff it is even better. 
Monkey King Bar is inferior to stats items on OD in terms of DPS and Rod of Atos somewhat fills the missing gap if you are facing evasion, while remaining relatively useful as a strong pre-BKB slow.
Later slots are generally filled with Intelligence stats items. The usual 
Scythe of Vyse and 
Shiva's Guard are all welcome additions to the hero. Scythe is generally better against strong enemy cores and offers more EHP against magical/pure damage (which you should try to negate with BKB), while Shiva’s Guard is better when facing heavy physical damage heroes and provides a decent extra AoE slow/nuke.
It is also worth noting that while having both Blink Dagger and Force Staff might be seemingly redundant, this is not the case. Force Staff is a highly versatile item which can potentially outshine many more expensive items in terms of utility and the stats on it complement OD well. For the same reasons, 
Eul's Scepter of Divinity is also a decent pick-up.
Closing comments
From the looks of it, Outworld Devourer is here to stay as one of the staple heroes of the patch. He offers high damage, decent utility and scales really well, while not being useless in early-mid/mid-game. His ability to safely farm mid in the laning stage as well as high damage spikes make him a good choice as a surprise pick, if he can’t be easily countered.
An un-countered “underpowered“ hero is generally going to be stronger than even the most OP heroes if the enemy team is prepared. Saving OD for last pick or forcing the opponent to make suboptimal choices in the drafting stage to counter the hero is a skill to master on its own—be flexible and mindful in your drafts and exploit the openings in the enemy team, without creating them in your own.
1st lol
Moonshard is a very good item for OD. More attack speed = more hits = more intel. The night vision also helps for ganking.
Meta! elegiggle
Midas > treads > blink > atos > AC; BoT or switch Atos for Scythe, then oct core for your 6th item.
One touch pls
5th 123456789
he's frustrating af, might be pretty balanced but less fun to play against than techies right now.
AM doesn't counter OD, it's actually the other way around. OD has pure damage, he's always high mana because of Essence Aura which keeps him and his team much safer from high damage mana voids.
Even on Dotabuff, AM is No. 8 for heroes which OD is best versus.
Whenever I play OD lately, I generally go treads into Drums and Dragon Lance, then something like BKB or Orchid or Blink depending on the game
Antimage does not counter OD. He never runs out of mana.
"AM doesn't counter OD, it's actually the other way around. OD has pure damage, he's always high mana because of Essence Aura which keeps him and his team much safer from high damage mana voids.
Even on Dotabuff, AM is No. 8 for heroes which OD is best versus."
This, is why you need more qualified staff to do a stats based write up. Socks you need to think smarter not harder.
Sure AM can kill OD easily with lockdown (his own via basher/abyssal or his team) but OD also has a team to avoid that exact situation.
Od has been one of my best heroes ever since, i prefer ghost scepter over bkb,gives me more gold to rush scythe of vyse.
Ghost scepter is why you play normal skill games.
@Huka "This, is why you need more qualified staff to do a stats based write up. Socks you need to think smarter not harder.
Sure AM can kill OD easily with lockdown (his own via basher/abyssal or his team) but OD also has a team to avoid that exact situation."
What? Are you arguing OD beats AM? Cause if you are then you're agreeing with whatever you quoted...
Somebody's on a character assassination spree
How about ghost scepter combined with BKB?Is it will make any hero become invulnerable?
Ghost form will stop if you activate BKB.
I agree he's stronger now, but bkb and silences still make him cry
They forgot to mention Silencer as a counter.
kind of a weak item choice on the hero, but an OC will give more imprisons, blinks and ults, as well as nice stats and it also life steals with orb. kind of gimmicky but you can break it down for a hex or shivas later if it is doing nothing for you.
nerf this OP shit pls
OD is quite good and awesome and there is nothing you can do about it. BLING*
Atos and Orchid; happy ganking bro. Also, Drum of Endurance is pretty underrated for a good reason, it has a pretty average price-to-performance ratio.
am counters od? really? omg kek wow
The average player, after learning the skill and item build for a hero doesn't change it for ever and apparently only reads the changelog to whine on discussion pages after getting rekt.
We still have Vladmir as Ursa most common item, despite it's being around 2 years that it is not UAM anymore.
So I would be more surprised if people actually put few levels on Astral Imprisonment.
Always pick OD on sea server when everyone goes full carry >_< Dem ints gonna be so good
I love OD <3
>AM counters OD
Tip top kek.
OD is probably AM's hardest counter because he simply never runs out of mana.
to Marconidas: But Vladimir on Ursa it there because it has benefits early, mid game(not just for you, for team as well). Ofc skillbuilds depend what is needed in team, but as a carry you prefer arcane orb all the way(int steal/plus dmg, also int.steal=more powerful ult)...here comes your support if you want lock down or whatever else is needed.
Except for a Skadi or OC or something like that, how is MKB inferior damage-wise compared to stats items? It is a glass cannon item with no defensive stats, that is true, but it still gives more expected damage per orb hit than Atos, and it even gives some attack speed. Doesn't give damage on ult, however.
I understand where you guys are coming from with the AM vs OD thing but I think that the fact that OD never runs out of mana is actually what makes him semi vulnerable to AM, as antimage will always be able to burn his mana. The only reason that it would be bad for am would be his ulti but AM would do/does way more damage to someone ( with only right clicks) if that person never ran out of mana which is the case with OD. As soon as someone is out of mana antimage does allot less damage (around 40 less) per hit so having that always on makes him a bit better.
I like to get a midas on OD into treads, force, orchid and then i get the standard scythe or shivas or atos. I also always get octarine because then the ult is a full heal.
i pick am against od a lot. and it works really good. it is true that od doenst run out of mana by himself but if u blink-abyssal-manta-hit him he is out of mana really fast and then just ult him.
also if u buy an early butterfly and just run at him and hit him he cant do much bec of the misschance and u do tons of damage bec there is lot of mana to burn like Stromrage mentioned.
With the amount of mana and mana regen OD has i bet that by the time OD has low enough mana for a worthwhile mana void from AM, he'll either be dead or on low enough health to just kill him with a couple more hits
why even lvl the passive at lvl 1 ._. it's not like he can cast anything...cuz u know he only has it
@melvin well if u lv arcane orb first u gonna out of mana very fast. While lvl the passive at lv 1 could help team at rune war.
I really believe 1-3-1-3-2-3 is the best way to spend your first 6 points, don't see any point in any other skill build...
only except might be lv3 taking imprison vs dodgeable stuns, but generally if that's happening and you feel like you need the point, you are up against a team of roaming gankers or bounty + voker or something, in which case RIP.
ййцццфф
AC is a respectable choice for OD if the enemy has high physical damage. It's a decent pickup instead of shiva's if you need that extra durability over the increased damage output of the +30 int.
Why would you get essence aura 1st level?
I think it's sometimes maybe for the team.
According to Dotabuff OD counters AM tho.
Dotabuff stats are based on pubs, are you seriously referencing them as an absolute?
AM + manta + abyssal = dead od + dead OD team around him. Yes, am dies to od too very hard, but saying AM ISNT good against OD is dumb. Even if OD is hitting things and getting his mana back that just guarentees AM's mana break damage. AM vs OD is kinda like morph vs antimage, theyre both good against each other.
AM + Basher + manta = dead OD
AM + manta = Dead AM
OD Orb deal bonus damage to illusion/spawned unit, and it'll very ez to kill AM
Bkb against am solves the problem of blink-abysal-manta-mana break combo...mana burn doing a lot of damage...so The fight could be damn even
1) No octarine mention?
2) OD can often be around half mana. Which is about 1000 missing mana. Which is a lot of damage in a mana void. Ant mage doesnt even have to go near him in the fight, or he can just buy a bkb.
:|