Skywrath mage is cancer ... Change my opinion

I don't believe that Skywrath Mage is the, or even a, hero to be taking out of the post-TI tournaments. While the Boots of Travel info is interesting and good to keep note of, his pickrate is still rather middling at best, and other than the aforementioned boots info and the position 4 exclusivity, there's no real trends to be gleaned from. A spike of high-burst heroes in high-impact situations like tournament GFs doesn't necessarily surprise me, either; simply being in the right position at the right time with a bit of chip damage or followup is usually enough to translate into a kill if there's no spell immunity or purges to speak of, and being able to CONSISTENTLY do so when the opportunities are set up or arise can give teams much more breathing room to work with at any stage of the game, as they not only get a 4v5 with little expenditure, they also get peace of mind that it will happen in the first place - against most heroes, catching a Skywrath Atos > E > Q > W > R combo proves to be fatal, especially if it happens before BKB is built (speaking of which, forcing most cores to build a BKB to avoid getting nuked and therefore making their itemization more predictable and/or their preferred itemization delayed gives Sky's team even MORE breathing room).

For heroes to take out of recent tours, I'd probably take Keeper of the Light as the biggest. After 0 picks in TI, he has 68 picks and 161 bans in Chengdu, and I believe it's because of the rise of mixed-damage cores that's been highlighted earlier. Chakra Magic tends to work extremely well with Kunkka, Gyrocopter, Lina, Tiny, and Ember, to name a few of the notable ones, letting them usually use their burst abilities twice during a kill attempt, and further using them for harass without worrying about not having it when it's important. Wisp can also enable KotL's team to get the explosive pickoffs that those heores tend to go for, or combo stuns into, and the trend of shorter laning stages and earlier teamfights also shifts into KotL's favor.
As a bonus, due to his lack of innate lockdown, KotL is usually paired with a core that has lockdown of their own, which KotL can reduce the cooldown of. Catching two Chaos Bolts quickly in an early fight isn't the most fun thing to deal with.

all items in the game counter SWM (
glimmer bkb manta gurdian force lotus eul blade mail )
Am press r deadbird
pugna put ward deadbird

0 hp and alot of mana problems should go to base after each combo
also suffers alot vs multiunits hero like naga pl ck terror brood

he has 0 armor and 600 hp this hero needs buffs if anything and the ppl who lose to him because they are dogshit and dont understand how this hero work

and we dont forget heroes that counter him as well basically everyhero with a save
abba omni dazzal sd lc od and anyhero with a lotus

also lose mid vs most high strength heroes without supps rotaions
he lose mid to kunkka brood ta viper huskar pudge silncer

also this hero cant farm and suck ass it it
cant deal with push stratgies and cant clear waves
no stun as asupport and huge mana problems with no nulls and items

any ganker can feed on him and late game he become useless

well, first skill have a 1.6x int., inicial int is 25, 25x1.6 = 40 dmg+ 60 base dmg. same dmg of Concussive Shot and with a shorter cooldown. and you can buy lots of int itens (as supp 4)

Do not forget that u can hit more enemys at once with a good timed concussive shot. Overall its the best lvl1 skill for sky in many cases.

When discussing heroes that are very strong right now it might also help to discuss ways to counter the hero.

Some counters here include: Force Staff, Hood of Defiance, Pipe of Insight, Raindrop (early to mid game), and even a casual Cloak can help you (but not save you). As soon as you get Atos ulted you force staff yourself out. Then the Skywrath will either start comboing someone else on your team or he'll build sheep. Either outcome means you're safe. If the Skywrath chooses a different target next time, then use your CC on Skywrath now that you aren't being targeted so he can't spam. If they build a Sheep then you've got plenty of time to build a Linkens or Lotus.

Lc + sky best combo

@The Great Mayo

items always eventually counter magic dealing heroes, the game is generally built around this principle. Making the most out of the advantages you have while you have them is important. If your team is mindful of the impending shift in power, they can shut down the opportunities. Classic example would be picking Bloodseeker vs a late game team and taking over all farming opportunities as fast as possible. Skywrath fits into this concept.

It's a bit unfair to judge the hero in a vacuum, as if he will be constantly battling other heroes 1v1. Windranger, Shadow Shaman, Clockwerk, Elter Titan, Vengeful Spirit, can provide more than enough stun for him to kill off just about any hero. This means that what is making Sky pickworthy is his ability to supplement other currently strong heroes. If mobile lockdown heroes fall off, so does Skywrath. It doesn't always work for sure, but calling players that lose to Sky is both a bit heavy handed and a misunderstanding of the greater picture.

And as far as picking a pugna or AM to counter skywrath, you just set your entire team goal to counter a glassy support. If it works with your lineup that's fine, but counter sky with items, not heroes. Any carry can get bkb, any support can get force staff.

@Yongelee

You mentioned the fact that Skywrath was picked in high pressure games and his winrates, but these specific statistics alone don't necessarily tell the entire story as I see it. More to the point, HOW was Sky picked? 35 picks across qualis is nice to look at, but what was the contest rate, and at what stage during the draft was Sky being picked? There is the possibility that Sky was being last picked as a way to shore up a botched draft in some of these high pressure games. While there isn't really any great way to spin a sub 50% wr in his favor past calling him slightly situational, the specifics of the situations he was picked can tell us a lot about whether he was a good surprise pick, an overvalued pick, a pick valued by lower skilled teams, or a panic pick. I'm willing to bet it's not a panic pick, but the info in the article leaves opportunities for the other possibilities to be true.

Was not expecting this.. what I was expecting should have been abba is disgusting good.. Abba is the new night stalker in this patch..

Most cacner heroes now are

nightstalker
chen
IO gyro
zeus
viper
kunkka
brood mama
good mirana player
lastpick meepo pl ck into no waves clear
kotl
abba
windrunner
omniknight

So the last patch on skywraith was almost 3 months ago, it takes you this long to realize the hero is good? You need a new job dude, you are so slow wtf u been doing for almost 100 days that you just now realized this?

I'm not a good skywraith but even I recognized how OP this hero is i was spamming it 13 games in last 3 months...

https://www.dotabuff.com/players/19672591/matches?hero=skywrath-mage

ur so slow dude

@Tokadub
2k dog lmao.
Played the hero 13 times over 3 months = spam? For the love of god.
Recognize how OP the hero is = "spam" the hero with ~50% winrate. KYS.

Dude dude dude, dude your mom joker 2019 :)

Soon after Boots of Travel changed I made a topic in this forum exactly about how strong BoTs is on SkyWrath and that it was strong enough to justify buying it as first item, although I personally go for Veil of Discord first then BoTs.
Also wrote that SkyWrath is easily the best position 4 in the game and maybe the only support hero in the game that has a increasing winning rate the longer the match goes.

So even though I agree with almost everything the author said, I must say it is nothing new, it started on 7.20 (almost one year ago) and probably the reason why people refuse to realize how good SkyWrath has became ever since 7.20 is because they refuse to accept how bad Rod of Atos is on SkyWrath.
If people saved their Mystic Flares for only when the enemy got disabled by one ally and instead Arcane Bolted to death faster targets the hero would definitely have a much more impressive win rate. Which is also why Veil of Discord is so good.

But yea, there is much more to talk about the hero that the author didnt mention.
Like how good the hero becames at dealing with heroes that require wave clear once he gets Aghanim Scepter, which used to be a huge weakness. Specially after they made Concussive Shot hit creeps.
Therefore, also how good the hero becames at farming with Aghanim Scepter and BoTs, which also used to be a huge weakness.
Most importantly, how dangerous the hero is late game once he gets Scythe of Vyse, because then none of your items will save you unless if you have Aether Lens.
Finally how strong the hero is once he gets Ethereal Blade, at that point you will die even if you got Pipe of Insight or Heart of Tarrasque.

And no Rod of Atos, ever.

I love this hero because is so fucking good but people are too newbie to play the hero properly and as result he remains unerfed. =)

Now someone please explain to me why Mystic Flare hits heroes and creeps but not creep-heroes? Literally hits everything except Brewmaster Spirits, Spirit Bear, Familiars and Warlock Golem. Its so annoying how vulnerable you are to Spirit Bear because of this stupid bug.

@guuz

According to the wiki it fully ignores them despite the visual appearance. While I am unsure the reason to show the spell hitting creep heroes, it also fully ignores illusions, possibly making it harder to figure out which unit is the real one. My guess is that this isn't a bug.

While I wouldn't fully rule out atos on a support, it's my understanding that the general consensus is that it makes fools of....fools. Works in lower brackets where the response item is only purchased after the rod of atos, rather than preemptively. Still, the extra control opportunity can be nice even if it does seem a tad expensive for what it does and how long it has before falling off. Don't misinterpret that, it's still better to combo with a stunny stunny hero to set up the kills as that is far more reliable at all stages of the game, but I still see....some....opportunities.

This hero needs to be nerf!

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@MM.Ugh Brock Hall

Indeed it ignores illusions, but thats a intended behaviour because otherwise you would do zero damage to PL and Naga even if you figured out which one is the real one.

Creep-heroes however... makes no sense. They changed the spell recently to hit creeps when there arent heroes around but creep-heroes count as heroes so it disables the "hitting-creeps" function of the spell making them immune to it.

The thing about Rod of Atos is the opportunity cost, there are too many items that will have more impact than Atos. For instance, BoTs, Veil of Discord and Glimmer Cape all cost less than Atos and have much more impact.

@guuz

If I am understanding what you're saying, you can't ulti a creep wave if, say, spirit bear is around, literally nothing will take damage, not even the bear? THAT sounds like an unintended interaction where they applied the interaction to one set of rules but forgot to apply it to another set of rules. Not doing damage to creep heroes I don't specifically have a problem with, but cancelling all damage does seem unintended.

I still think it's kind of hard to completely ignore what atos can bring to the table, I guess I'm just not completely there with you on that one. Against blink heroes or melee heroes it's a cheap way to force them to pop bkb out of turn, and you can't completely ignore the fact that it literally holds someone inside your mystic flare. If you get it at a comfortable pace, it can be enough to get the snowball rolling.

"Arcane Boots was built on Skywrath Mage over 100,000 more times than boots of travel but only has a win rate of 49.04%."

Great analysis at its best again. How miraculous it is that a "I am losing and/or don't know what I do so I default to arcane" is below in winrate compared to "I can allow myself to buy BoT and I know what I'm doing".

Next time observe how great Divine Rapier is for almost every heroes, because when it is in their inventory the game is 95% won...