Fun Things to Try in Pubs

By KawaiiSocks on April 22nd, 2025

There are always fun things to try in Dota. The sandbox nature of the game leaves a lot of room for effective creativity. Some of the ideas presented today might be hard to pull off, but with some work we believe they can work wonders for your party.

Shadow Demon + Grimstroke

Shadow Demon is a decent support for higher level play. He is a strong Ringmaster counter, has good saves and can be quite intimidating in lane, in the right hands. The same cannot be said about Grimstroke.

The problem with the latter is that he is quite coordination-dependent and doesn’t have strong, immediate effects. Unless, of course, you play the Fine Art facet, stack relentlessly in lane and land those 500+ damage Stroke of Fate nukes.

But we aren’t here to talk about the heroes individually, though we feel like Grimstroke is generally underrated. We are here to talk about the absolutely ridiculous combination of Grimstroke’s Soul Bind and Shadow Demon’s Disseminate.

Think of it is as Warlock’s Fatal Bonds + Soul Bind combo, but better. The concept is similar: you get two targets, both of which now start converting any single damage they receive into AoE damage in a respectable radius. Targets themselves also take increased damage and a universal Damage Increase is a very strong concept.

As long as enemies are relatively close to the two bound targets, any sneeze in their general direction will hurt. And any AoE ability will get tripled in its damage, or even more. With the level 15 talent on Grimstroke and a level 20 talent on Shadow Demon the values on basic spells can quickly spiral out of control and if you also have strong Unit Target AoE or Bounce-type spells on your team, the fights will be over, before they even start.

Here’s a quick example of a single use of Leshrac’s Lightning Storm to convince the non-believers:

Notice how even the non-targeted dummy takes a ton of damage, by just being next to the other two targets. Naturally it will be much harder to pull off in a non-controlled environment, but the potential is definitely there.

Keeper of the Light + Underlord

Anyone following the professional scene is probably aware of how strong the Recall KotL + Ember Spirit or Storm Spirit is. Even more global mobility, 20% MS increase, almost infinite mana, reduced cooldowns, you name it. But what if we push it a step further?

Since Recall is considered a teleport spell, it procs the Invading Force innate from Underlord. The latter provides the teleported target with a pretty powerful MS bonus and, sometimes more importantly, with a Universal Damage Reduction buff.

Naturally, even with the level 10 talent the +15% Damage Reduction might not seem like a lot, but consider heroes like Luna or Gyrocopter who can suddenly run into five heroes at 550 MS, eating spells and still living to heal up? This is something that can turn any of your cores into an actual initiator, while allowing your Offlane to wait for the best moment to jump in with AoE teamfight spells.

We believe that this combination is considerably harder to pull off, but, once again, the potential is definitely there. Moreover, it is something that can force the enemy team to overcommit to a target they suddenly can’t kill, as it is too fast and durable for them. Give it a try in a stack and let us know about your findings!

Ancient Apparition + Oracle

This support duo is, frankly, terrible. For your everyday Solo MM we don’t recommend it at all, but when playing in a stack and when complementing them with cores who have actual hard crowd control, it can work wonders.

The idea is simple — Oracle has a very powerful nuke on a low cooldown, but it has a big downside, as it starts healing the opponent. AA prevents all healing effects. The end result is a support duo who, because of the Clairvoyant Curse facet and the Ice Vortex magic damage amplification can kill virtually anyone in the game.

Now, the question is — do you actually need supports that kill in your everyday pub? Probably not in every game, but it is a combination that will melt any core. Black King Bar is a bit annoying to deal with, certainly, but in our testing we saw a respectable amount of damage even through BKB and with Fortune’s End the typical Glimmer Cape is essentially a non-factor.

For somewhat similar reasons, Oracle can also work wonders with Doom or Shadow Demon and the former combination is, in our opinion, generally strong in most drafts.

Closing thoughts

We don’t believe that the overall meta is settled at the moment. From what we are seeing in the professional scene, there are still tons of underexplored and overvalued heroes in the game. That means it is still time to experiment and surprise your enemies to gain MMR, as opposed to sticking to “what works”.

Do you have any combinations that you would like to share? Or would you prefer to keep them a secret for now?

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