Charging Through the 4k Pubs—Spirit Breaker Dominance
Identifying the next breakout hero can be tricky sometimes—the meta changes unpredictably, picks develop through the LAN tournaments at a very fast pace, and you never know when the next balance patch is going to hit. However, in certain cases, the foreshadowing is more than obvious—you just need to look in the right places.
The common theme for unexpected, successful heroes is that patch after patch they receive small buffs, until they get noticed by either the professional or pub scene. Spirit Breaker is another of these cases—for 10 patches in a row, the hero received nothing but buffs and has slowly climbed his way almost to the top of our tier list. Currently, the hero boasts an almost 54% win rate and relatively high popularity. He especially excels in the 4k bracket, with a 55.5% winrate, before dropping down to 52% in the 5k+ games.
So how exactly did it happen, and what changed globally to allow him to become this fearsome pub winner?
Reading The Changelogs
Over the course of the last ten patches, Spirit Breaker received the following changes:
Longer cast range, vision over the target, and reduced cooldown on
Nether StrikeIncreased damage and pseudo-random mechanics for
Greater BashActive component for [missing skill: spirit-breaker-empowering-haste-5354]
A rework on
Charge of Darkness cooldown mechanics
While these changes might seem minor on their own, combined they make for a much stronger hero. Moreover, Greater Bash’s increased damage applies to all of his active abilities, while the increased speed only furthers his mid-game potential.
On top of it, the hero has also received a decent talent tree, with good early-game options.
Addressing The Meta
Since the introduction of 7.00, the meta has gotten a little bit more restrictive, compared to 6.88. There is now a definitive focus on early- and mid-game dominance, strong pushing and teamfight potential. The pool of viable heroes is still enormous, but it doesn’t allow for certain strategies to be effective.
Spirit Breaker is the king in the earlier stages of the game. He deals a lot of damage, disrupts the enemy positioning, while disabling them, and can solo-kill most supports in the game. He also excels in ganking during the laning stage and can snowball into an unstoppable force.
The stats on the hero make him one of the most annoying to deal with—he has a massive starting HP pool coupled with good starting amount of armor. For many lineups the hero is simply unkillable until later in the game, unless he massively over-commits. And even then, chances are he is going to take someone down with him.
Lane Presence
Spirit Breaker, like most currently popular offlane heroes, can be played both as a position 4 and position 3. Though, to be fair, his snowball potential only truly shines when he gets solo experience.
His durability often means he can be more aggressive during the laning stage, at least allowing himself to soak XP and can even frequently afford to go for last-hits. In 1v1 scenarios, he is inconsistently scary—despite PRD (pseudo random distribution), Greater Bash is still a random-based spell and its procs is what can make all the difference between kill and death. But even without this kill potential, he can hold his ground against virtually any opponent.
He does have a weakness: unlike most current offlaners, he is really bad at jungling. His higher than normal BAT means he doesn’t hit as frequently, especially during the early levels. It massively slows down his ability to kill neutrals, and even Iron Talon does not completely solve this problem. Jungling Spirit Breaker is not hard. It is just really, really slow.
Engaging Activities
Lack of jungling capabilities, however, is much less of a problem for this hero. Unlike most other offlane playmakers and initiators, Spirit Breaker doesn’t need 
Blink Dagger to become effective. As early as level 3, he can already start rotating around the map, setting up kills or bullying out the enemy out of the lane.
It is also extremely fun to play the hero—you are constantly in action, being the tip of the spear in most engagements. A high BAT will prevent the hero from scaling amazingly, but in the mid-game he is the hero who controls the tempo, potentially even more so than the Queen of Pain or Ember Spirit.
Dressing Up For The Occasion
The hero is also very flexible when it comes to his itemization. He generally takes an early detour into less expensive stats/utility items, such as 
Urn of Shadows or 
Drum of Endurance, but later on can go for a variety of very interesting options.
Echo Sabre is amazing, since it increases your chances of an additional Greater Bash after Charge. 
Shadow Blade will hide your movement around the map, while providing some necessary attack speed. 
Blade Mail will either punish the enemy team, if they try to attack you, or will ensure you have some personal time with your target. All these items are exceptionally good on the hero, and all of them cost less than 3000 gold.
In the later stages, typical Spirit Breaker players go for team-enabling auras or some extra utility, however, in this meta, if you can get ahead far enough in the earlier stages, there will be no late game. And Spirit Breaker is the type of hero who can ensure this.
Closing Thoughts
The meta is ever-changing and the patches come more frequently nowadays. Just in the last two months, we have received two sizeable amendments to Dota.
That said, the previous two patches were more occupied with ironing out the glaring balance issues, rather than changing the meta in a significant way. With that in mind, learning to play Spirit Breaker is still a very safe option—the hero is probably going to stay in the meta for at least another couple of months.
damn son
not first
well written
damn, bara
daaaahhhh!!!
6th :D:D:D
7th .......................^_^
8th lels, wheres dagon? He is more annoying with dagon
one of the best ez MMR hero in 1.5k
by the way where's the armlet
10th
boring .a lot of time im force to pick bara becos enemy pick a lot of elusive hero.and cant rely on ally chain stun. so bara cos he can chain stun with himself and tank.
spammed this hero for a free 500 mmr with friends. much easier to be effective if you can rely on a core when you gank their lane, but hes probably a solid pick in solo queue too.
isn't he generally a support nowadays? his farming is pretty weak, and also the team needs you to be ganking most of the time anyways. altho he doesn't need big items as much
@und_pun
Current meta is fairly aggressive, which favors heroes that farm through kills rather than creeps. Since he is going to be involved in so many kills early on, it makes sense to give him priority farm.
@Brock Hall
giving bara farm is fine, but not ideal, for 2 reasons, 1. he doesn't farm well, he doesn't have aoe damage to clear lanes, he doesn't jungle efficiently either, so under the same circumstances, he wouldn't be as farmed as other cores 2. his stats and skills dictate that he doesn't scale as well as other cores with items in terms of dps. however, his base stats are great ,so without being 6 slotted he is still very much functional, his skills are more suitable for a ganker roamer role, applying pressure to the opponent and freeing up more resources for your teammates
This is one of my highest winrate heroes, and its amazing what you can do with him against an unprepared team...
Oh my boy. He punishes lonely farmers so much that enemy either has to stick together or face their doom. He has a 30 min of full power spike and relevance which is really rare. His scalling is relatively strong but he is not a good late gamer, because he favors skirmish kinda fights and not 5 vs 5 team fights. I think late game either you have to turn him into a Bkb initiator or a Mjolnir split pusher.
I feel greedy support (4 position) would be better on Bara rather than offlane, because with the amount of times he will rotate early on from charging, he will give up the offlane if he is a 3 position.
Honest question from a predominantly normal skill scrub: if the meta is so geared towards early-mid game, that in theory you don't get the game to late, why not put him as a 1 position, in terms of farm, at least for the early game(first 10 mins)? One 2K gold item, and he can fight(theoretically he could fight early without any items if RNGsus blesses him)
more blog about offlane hero...meh
He needs a solo lane and position 1 usually has 2 heroes. At safe lane he faces strong heroes, but at offlane he usually faces easy to kill squishy heroes. He is not a pusher and position 1 should usually be a pusher. His dps do not scale that much and is not on par with someone like TB or Luna or Life Stealer or Chaos Knight even farmed equally. He could be totally functional with just a tread and urn and levels and granting him a position 1 is a total waste of position 1 and a total waste of his early fearsome strength.
@und_pun
Priority farm was a bit misleading because the point is not the gold, as he gets that from the kills, but the xp, which fits perfectly with the concept of an offlaner. Giving him the extra levels early allows him to get ahead during the time he is strongest. If you are utilizing him in the offlane, you're likely trying to close the laning stage as soon as you can to continue choking the enemy out of resources and map control. It's definitely a snowball lineup situation, and you could still use him as a roamer, but he won't be AS powerful in the early game and will drop off faster.
оу ее лол кек
@und_pun i agree, but I think he can go either way. As you said having a position 3 that can farm more effectively, eg. Centaur or something is good but pos 4 and 3 bara both have advantages and disadvantages. I think for this article it was mainly focusing on being position 3 because you can more reliably have an impact due to the increased xp
BUFF BARA
NERF THIS SHIT PLS
What is tempo mean?
abused month ago and won 13 matches in row as SB(Support pos 4)
@B!urryFace "Tempo" as used in Dota2 is the pace in which certain roles and activities are to be done at specific time intervals (i.e. when to start ganking, how far should you push after winning a gank/clash, at what time should you be able to get core items given the farm availability, when do cores start participating in fights, etc.).
17% bash chance (100% bash chance)
@Fight Machine thanks for the insight. I already know that pos1 bara is a generally a dumb idea, but i toyed w with the idea before; I drafted a position 1 bara in a local offline tourney, told my carry player to just chill safelane and farm first 15 mins, then start fighting. He came out at 18 mins w S&Y and blade mail, enemy couldn't really deal with him, we won after snowball. That's why I brought up the suggestion. L
I guess it would only work with a lineup of semi-carries who can all potentially be support, more or less give distributed farm except for one(in my case, we gave to bara), all power level peak at roughly 20 mins and snowball as much as possible and end before enemy carry gets to 3 items. If I remember, my draft was Venge, Lina, Bara, Silencer, and Lesh? Something crazy like that.
part of this article is true, the rest is just interesting
https://www.dotabuff.com/players/48639595/matches?page=2
op played 500mathces in the past year and only played 2 match as SB
in his entire dota history with thie account he played 23 matches with a 30.43% win rate.
in conclusion, not very reliable?
I have around 260 Spiritbreaker matches - mostly played as 4 pos Support in Team ranked around 4.5-5.5k (66% win rate)
Have to say...the hero is VERY good at aggressive duo or trilanes.
With the right combo u can almost destroy almost any enemy safelane...just team up with heroes that can dive towers.
Not a fan of Core SB, only things u need is boots/urn/drums or solar crest for your team and you good. Lotus orb is also really good on this hero.
dam sucka mc
I hope IceFrog don't even read this article and do not nerf my loveley bull
Sb is weak as pos 3 nowadays due to strong pos 1. He lose out vs spark, jug in last hit. And a solo ranged support can give him hell.
However he is extremely strong in 2v2 lane.
Nowadays I play him almost exclusively pos 4. As a pos 4, he is hindered by being a melee hero. Other than that he is in a fine spot. He can be a surprise safe lane choice as well.