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Visage is most definitely one of the toughest characters you could decide to pickup. He's not AS hard as some people seem to think he is, granted, but he has a huge skill ceiling, and if you're someone that shy's away from microing more than 1 character, he's definitely a hero to give a pass. Granted, if you like heroes like Brood and controlling her spiderlings, you'll most likely find yourself right at home.

Orchid is super tempting on Visage - but his ability to get it off reliably and get kills with it can be quite difficult, because he has a hard time to get in on a character, unless he has an Aghanim's First, which ruins the timing altogether. Rushing AC is crazy powerful, even more so in a game you're already winning. The 'Ultimate Build', that is, if it's possible in that game, is without a doubt Vlad/Drums -> AC -> WIN. It's not even funny how quickly stuff just crumbles. Realistically, the more common build you'll have to do is Vlad's, perhaps Drums, and then you're looking to itemize into things such as Guardian Greaves and / or Pipe - which can make you and your team near unkillable - even better because if you're playing correctly into his toll facet, and have a good game for it, you'll reach timings on these items that NO other hero can. It's wild.

I didn't win my lane in this game at all actually, at most I'd classify it as going even! Death Toll genuinely performs worse than Speulchre as a facet if you don't get a whole lot of value out of it. One of Visage's biggest problem in general is that he has a hard time getting a hold of someone and killing them early, since he doesn't have an easy way to 'get in' on his opponents if they're playing defensively. Best thing you can do when behind is to utilize a smoke and setup a kill with your other players. One good engagement with 1-2+ Death Toll kills gives you such immense fortune. It's definitely harder to win a comeback game, even more so with Visage than some of the other offlaners / supports out there I'd argue - but your best bet really is to try and utilize smokes to make those kills happen. It's very likely that the enemy will go out of position when ahead!

@@Kyubashi thanks for the advice. what about itemization any recommendations on what to make when u are ahead vs when u are behind?

Hopefully said KotL is actually hitting those Q's onto the enemies, because if he is, it's free damage for your W and very good chances of killing. If not, it's not exactly ideal at all - and not unique to Visage at all. A position 4 KotL can very easily make a lane go sideways if he spams his Q and it doesn't lead to anything. Rubick and Jug should however have next to zero kill potential on you. As soon as you get lifted by Rub, and spun by Jug, you can effectively just press Q on Jug as Visage, and out-run him quite easily, unless he rushed boots as fast as possible.

@@Kyubashi i did actually manage to utilize his q spam by spamming w as well but rubick jugg combo was deadly enough to kill me down after lift and spin so my q was still useless thanks for the quick reply

Glad to hear it worked! Yeah, 9class just came out and pretty much said - Spam tinker support if you wanna rely on your team but get ez wins if they play well - and spam Vis with Death Toll to stomp games Rank 300 and below. You turn into Scrooge Mcduck in 10 minutes. It's funny.

I wouldn't exactly recommend either. Bloodseeker is in a very weird spot at the moment in general, and Huskar tends to be this gimmicky hero that falls in and out of the meta (although his new facet IS interesting!) If you're playing unranked, then anything goes really, but for ranked I would hold off, or steer them towards either mid (Huskar) or Safelane (Bloodseeker)

Both of them are viable for Visage mid! Right now, in general, most Visage players are actually favoring Death Toll even over Sepulchre. If you play with it on mid, and proceed to gank with your level 6-7 timing (Birds + High Soul Assumption), you can generate some serious income as you get kills going for your team. Very certain Death Toll is going to in general become the most favored facet for Vis at this point, even more so for mid.

@@Kyubashi thanks for the tip.

Found the Monster Hunter enjoyer ✊ nice catch!

This is true - considering the Bounty comparison I provided in the video, Visage will face the exact same issue if he's unable to setup and score kills with others - the facet kind of peters out. It CAN also be problematic if you have a lineup that doesn't score kills early, such as a Spectre on Safelane or an Underlord on offlane, making it significantly harder to get the ball rolling. Luckily - regarding getting reported right now, the system is VERY forgiving, so unless you're already at a low behaviour score, it's very unlikely you'll see any significant harm to your behaviour score from false flag reports.

visage used to be a super greedy support back in the day. very strong trilane hero

Guilty Gear music in generally slaps! I'm not exactly an avid fighting game player (although I do love them and follow the scene) - Haven't played Strive since season one I'm afraid!

This is perfectly normal and is actually something a lot of higher level players do for Visage, exactly BECAUSE it builds into Vladimirs Offering, which you almost always want anyway.

@@Kyubashi thanks man i tried the build and early game is extremely good but i dislike gleipnir its great but for that gold i couldve got AC and some more i like pushing aggressively so AC feels like it does everything about visage well but after watching the video i go 2 null, tranquil boots, vlads, drum, AC, scepter. also note that bloodthorn is autokill if opponent doesnt dispel cause each attack from visage and familiars gets flat 50 dmg on top but i usualy buy it for snowball cause its expensive

@@markodespotov1455 The good thing about Visage is that there often isn't a definitive 'best build' - this is a good thing because it makes experimentation a lot easier for people really wanting to delve into what Visage is capable of as a hero - PLUS it lets him change items on a per-game basis, which not exactly every hero can do and be successful from doing.

@@Kyubashi true but may i ask you when one of your familiars is low and you want to quickly stoneform it what is your way to be consistent and quick i usualy tab cycle until i see low hp bar below skills and pop but i sometimes mess up i need a quickest way if there is one

@@markodespotov1455 If the familiar is the closest one to visage you can just cast stone form from him. Otherwise you'll need individual control groups for each bird so you can select it and use the skill quickly. You'll have to work on keeping track of which is which tho.

You need to press your ultimate (Summon Familiars) when it's set to AUTOCAST You can do this in three ways - by right clicking it with your mouse cursor - by holding in shift before you press the ability, or by designating a custom button to toggle it INTO autocasting.

Oh I see, but if the skill is on cooldown and i still have summon, it cant be recall ya?

@@herman5404 Correct! You're unable to recall while the skill is on CD

First and foremost, this is a really good question, because this is also a common scenario. Let me start off by saying I have some bad news - This doesn't change...AT ALL (Currently 6.5-7k as of this video). 90-95% of the time on my Vis offlane lanes, I have a melee support, and MAYBE 20%ish of that time, they actually know how to pull melee support off - it's genuinely quite a bit harder than range support, but that's another topic altogether. This is genuinely the hardest hurdle for Visage really, because it seriously dictates what you can and cannot do during the game. He's the type of hero that can run away with a game if he's given a great start with a good pos 4, but can end up not ramping up if he doesn't get going correctly. The most important thing is to get to level 6 as fast as possible, due to achieving birds. If your support isn't pulling or achieving things as a melee's, or dishing out damage so you can soul assumption people, you have a serious problem. There's genuinely only one of two solutions, and its far from perfect. You'll basically have to tell your position 4 what they SHOULD be doing. If they're afraid to do anything, they really need to pull, so that at the very least, you can get a safe amount of constant XP due to lane location being closer to your tower. Or - they need to LEAVE. This isn't at all ideal for Visage, as is often better for characters such as Brood, Darkseer or Timber, who; depending on Matchup they're facing, can brush off most kill attempts when played right. The biggest issue stems from the fact that your XP is being split in half - which isn't bad by it's own; but if its dished out to a pos4 partner that doesn't pull their weight during lane, you're now getting level 6 at a snails pace and the entire game suffers for it. Know that this is one of the most frustrating (and common!) things to happen during Visage games, and it still happens ALL the time during my games. I simply try to make the best out of it and steer my pos 4 as best I can. It's not exactly ideal, but DotA is a team game. The only way you can avoid this scenario entirely is by playing Visage mid. Keep grinding with him, and try to spur your pos4 players on to play more aggressively and pull - if they listen; great, you might just win lane - if not, hey, at least you tried, and there's always a next game.

It CAN - although it's a lot more uncommon there. I don't really do Visage on mid a whole lot, and because you usually (or should at least) have a bigger level lead than your side lines, you can proceed to be serious issue around the whole map, making items such as especially Orchid a lot more common on mid, whereas it's rarely seen on offlane Visage. Here's a game from LIL - 7831657576 (Match ID) This is obviously a super high level pub, but he still runs the hero mid with the build; so it might serve you well as a stepping stone. Best of luck!

Good to hear! Yeah, Visage is seriously strong, and even better is that because he's such a skillheavy hero, you're only getting progressively better as you keep playing him, which only adds up to you winning more. Good luck with the grind!

I wouldn't exactly recommend this - If you enjoy it (and hopefully winning too) then that's all fine and good. Depends on what your goal is really.

@Kyubashi it's herald and I been playing dota since warcraft 3 this my only account but I'm essentialy smurfing by sandbagging when I get to the top end of herald I spam the lowest winrate heros of each meta so i dont get outa herald, my preferred bracket is herald 5 it has highest average match quality compared to all other brackets, maybey in immortal rushing witchblade on Visage wouldn't work but in herald it's a great first item

@@user-ou8ki4rj4l youre a menace if yo do all that to keep yourself in a certain rank

@markodespotov1455 my go to hero for sandbagging is IO because no matter how hard I try IO Winrate in herald pubs is like 30%

@@user-ou8ki4rj4l fair enough

Exclusively facet 1 - Sepulchere. His other facet quite literally makes the hero WORSE than if you could choose not to use a facet at all. There's bigger downsides to not being able to control your familiars individually, on top of things like them dying automatically when Visage does. It's absolutely dreadful, and they should rework it to something interesting.

@@Kyubashi I want to use visage but I suck at controlling his familiars. Any tips?

? You can see in the video ? It's the one that recalls the birds after 4s

@@methselah You just gotta buckle down and learn my dude! That's part of the fun isn't it? Why learn heroes like Lone Druid, Meepo, Invoker and Visage if you're not going to make full use of their kit, right? Best thing to do is just really to play him and get 'familiar' with him. The more you play, the better it'll feel over time. It took me initially like 5 games to feel somewhat comfortable, and then another 10 or so to feel like I was really in control. Still improving with every game I play - so don't hold back and get that practice in! Unranked is your friend here, too.

@@methselah Make sure you have at least one control group set to the birds and one set to all controlled units. The birds are much faster than visage so if you want to keep them close don't send them very far. Holding down a ctrl group will focus the camera on the main thing you're controlling.

Seems like you're an experienced brood player,any resources I can learn from to learn brood?

I wouldn't exactly call ES a dead hero lol. He's one of the more troublesome characters to deal with right now, and is doing really solid winrate wise. If you watch high-level pubs live, you'll see some rather nasty stuff. A proper ES can be the sole reason a team is winning. That said, I a very much agree wit the notion that an enemy picking ES can be a blessing - Brood has a tendency to make people freak out and pick 'counters' - but if you're experienced enough, won't exactly counter you all too much in this day and age, you just have to adjust around them. Even more so because people will be picking something they either don't know how to play or aren't comfortable with, they just assume it's going to give them a free game. Likewise, people will also tend to pile ontop of Brood. The CK in this game was spending ALL of his time trying to help his team, accomplishing nothing in the process, and being 5-6 levels behind Juggernaut by minute 25ish, because he wanted to make sure Brood didn't do too much to his tier 1's and 2's on his botlane. There is something super satisfying about out-smarting your enemy with Brood, and clearly making them pick and play completely into your hands, only to fumble a game as a result. Not many other heroes have this feel to them.

I Hope it was worth the time! 💪

A good question! Followed up with a rather lazy answer, I'm afraid. Like I mention briefly in the footage - "This is bad - I don't have Brood mapped out in this patch" The reality is that I actually think ALL three stat items are super good on Brood. Bracer helps mitigating the loss of her previous passive regen from web (now tied to her new passive!) - Wraith Band is the highest actual damage increase for her, plus the armor is cool - and Null plays perfectly into her desire for wanting as much mana regen as possible to keep spiderlings going. Wraithband might have proved slightly better courtesy of the added armor in reality - albeit Clockwerk was maxing his cogs over his Battery Assault, which has become quite a normal thing on him. I genuinely agree with you though 🤷 Just need more experience with her in 7.36. Good shout on the WB all the same!

I think, when playing brood and deciding on laning items, it's also useful to consider what your item progression plan looks like for this specific game. Maybe you're planning on rushing disperser as your first slot, so 2xbracers may be a better choice to get some cheap extra hp, before you can buy a proper item with str. Or you get 1 or even 2 nulls because you won't be buying mana regen items any time soon, apart from soul ring, since mana is easier to sustain now with 1 less active skill (I've actually seen a carry brood with 1 wb, 1 null and no soul ring in DotaTV, but I don't see how it can be anything other than griefing) Or maybe you don't need a 2nd stat item at all, either because your lane is chill and uncontested or especially if you can't contest it yourself - few extra stats won't turn a bad matchup into a good one, so you're better off focusing on not feeding and hitting better core item timings (i.e. what seems to be the default mid brood game play in 7.36 so far - where you bite the bullet and block out the rage from getting abused in mid by Shadow Fiends in every damn match and invest everything into achieving (hopefully) gamebreaking timings for orchid/bloodthorn or orchid+bkb or whatever and then you just go make them go "Uuuuuuuuu!", that death sound and animation never fails to entertain me :) Still, I do miss the bola, man So While it seems that skipping cheap items is done mostly on brood mid, I've seen high mmr brood players follow the same kinda logic in the side lanes

​@@Kyubashito be fair, I don't think anyone has brood mapped out right now. It's like every brood main on dtpt seems to have his own build, different from all the others. And it keeps changing. And playing without bola now, it is a big adjustment. Can't get easy kills from safe range anymore, not as easy to snowball, but you're farming even faster. If my impression is right and Brood is now becoming more passive and item dependant, this is definitely not something I'm gonna be happy about.

@@SoreEater I agree a lot with this. Her staying power seems so much better now, and she's absolutely better at scaling than before, which makes her a lot better in pubs where anything can happen and throws are common place Having a hero that can ramp up and win very early but ALSO go into late game very efficiently is a blessing.

Glad to have a fellow Visage lover along for the ride! 😎

true

It sucks but you’re right, i gave up even trying heroes like visage magnus and dark seer in low rank

@@rmac02 mag can own lategame tho

@@BRUH-xz1zp maybe with a Daedalus/skadi or something, but when i play initiators i always focus on CDR and mobility. Maybe thats where i’m going wrong, but if i’m gonna play for late game i may as well play lycan or another already right-click focused hero

Tier 27 visage, div 5 32% atm. True that with visage game should end fast but if it goes late, visage can still own with scepter, bongoboots & hex/bloodthron. Or ac if no one gets it.

I do them here and there on longer videos! Just need those creative juices flowing x) Thanks for watching!

Good Questions Generally speaking you don't really want to focus all your points into W because it short-circuits your ability to play with birds entering into the mix at level 6. Nowadays I'd say you can pour two points into it, courtesy of getting one level of your passive for free at level 1, but other than that, maxing Q (and using it correctly) leads to massive damage increase in lane, pre and post level 6 (familiars) I haven't personally heard about a 1-1-3-1 mid-build for Visage, and it sounds kinda jank; and I can't exactly see who would do that due to how much you'd lose out on it, but who knows - anything is possible! Good on you for getting into Visage! It's an interesting road ahead, and you'll learn a lot from playing him.

@@Kyubashi Thank you very much for such a detailed answer. I will definitely listen to what is said ❤

@@gigachadpique Give em' hell lad!

Yeah I'm not using him in ranked either until they get around to fixing it - it feels atrocious 😂 Lets hope they do it soon!

I just don't use the alt cast, hero is actually stronger now with the left facet

Yeah - I'm not exactly sure why they've repeatedly have tried to push this sort of change on Visage. He felt really good to play prior to 7.35 as well.

Appreciate the kind words! I'm still determining what to release/when, but I did vow to wait to do any new major videos until patch 7.36 dropped - I made that call back in MARCH 🤣 I still stream most days if you're interested and want to ask stuff directly (Twitch.tv/FabKyubashi) - Thanks for watching! 🙇

It's dreadful, yes. To my knowledge, there's no fix so far. All we can do is wait :/

Immortal players apparently

Thats why I said throwing or probably griefing. immortal or not is no excuse

@@tnkurse lol. Lmao even.

Not sure why Nyx mid would give you low prio. This game was in the 6k+ area, and Nyx mid, while not common, does get occasionally picked. Also, I'm 100% and offlane player by nature. It's where I thrive - I do recommend picking Nyx and going wild with him though, he's really good at the moment, dagon build or more around stats build.

It's there, just not super loud. I tend ot have DotA's game sounds at 10-20% volume, with music being even lower than that.

Indeed - Being a universal hero, he gets so much damage from building into it, and due to how his mind flay works, he really just starts kicking ass - Being able to last longer in fights generally does so much in this patch

Just as nice as that sweet-ass comment

Blink dagger is REALLY good on him! This isn't exactly a guide on how to play Nyx - more so gameplay of how I use him from time to time in pubs. Viewing a Blink Dagger into him early (post Phylactery) is REALLY good under the right circumstances. Sucks about the battlecup my dude. We'll get em next time!

We all love a good success story!

It's looking increasingly like the prediction is spot on. The main takeway being the KAZURAI that keeps being mentioned as a caste of Samurai birds - with KESTREL being one of the names repeated a lot. Time shall tell.

Spoken like a true Chen player - Love to hear it! Yeah, much like Chen, especially when played as a position 4-5 and you're not going 'core items', you're a swiss army knife that can deviate your build to whatever your team needs Pipe? No Problem. Drums? Yes Sir. etc. As an added little tidbit, especially because you mentioned playing him as a support - While Solar Crest is largely seen as NERFED in general (which it was, due to the self-cast attack speed being removed), it is worth noting that if you pick it up on Visage, you CAN use it on one of your birds to massively increase it's dmg output. If you're pushing a tower solo or don't have a core to buff with the item, slapping it on a familiar seriously increases it's DPS output.

Hello twin. Let's win more with big bird man yeah? 💪

While I don't think it's entirely as viable as POSITION 3 for him, it can work very well all the same ever since his transition into becoming a universal hero. His burst from his W is insanely strong in lane; and now that he hits as hard as he does, he can set it up entirely by himself into 3 charges (level 1), regardless of whether he's being played as a core or support. The main issue one would run into playing him as a support is that because you won't have the same income as a core, you wont reach the same awesome peaks that he does; so you'd be much better off hurrying into strictly push items. This wont work as well if your team isn't keen on playing aggressive, and shoving towers early - not to mention that as a 4, you're genuinely expected to be very aggressive and create space, so time spent farming too much could severely hurt your team. I do recommend playing (and practicing him) though! He's very unlikely to see any nerfs coming into the next patch, and if you get a proper feel of how to play around your teammates with him as a support, you will be able to see success.

Gauntlet was such an interesting hero. Say what you will about HoN balance - they really were great at coming up with original heroes. Puppet Master, Flux etc. So much fun to play with.

@@Kyubashi HoN was honestly just about as balanced as DOTA 2 is. I never had a problem with it for balance. LOVED that game. Got to top like.. 8% or something with my friends. Gauntlet hook that pulled towards you (like pudge) was super hard since u could only aim using your hero direction and press the button to launch it straight. I was just gettin pretty good with him :x

Gotta get those predictions in there!

Glad to hear it! It's absolutely true. I've been running a lot of math on damage done early in lanes (roughly the first 8-10 minutes); and Visage always comes out with the most almost no matter what - it's just bonkers how much damage he brings to the game in early, mid and lategame. If you want a more thorough run-down (albeit more rambly) I've made an entire replay analysis of one of my Visage games, and most of the stuff I go through to try and achieve victory/stomp conditions! Good luck with the gargoyle man. He's both fun and strong right now.

He definitely fits best as a position 3, because he's able to be scary in lane and reach timings very quickly. That said - yes! You can absolutely play him as a support, although it's harder for you to achieve bigger items such as aghanim's quickly, so an early drum becomes a lot more important as a 4/5 TL;DR - Yes. Absoutely.

@@Kyubashi thanks man

It's absolutely a possibility for Visage, and does help him + his team. The beautiful thing about Tranquil is that if you min-max them as you're farming (dropping them in and out of inventory as shown in the footage), you'll constantly be on high health thresholds no matter what. Going arcane boots in their stead is a lot easier to play, doesn't exactly set your back, and you can even upgrade into GUARDIAN GREAVES which is also really good on Visage for obvious reasons, making his pushes / teamfights stronger by a lot. Experiment, and see what works for you!

He's areally good hero to main right now - but also a really good hero learn and improve with in general. He teaches you a lot about the game, so both your decision making and skill with rise alongside playing with him!

Yeah the Solar Crest change is wild, especially for a hero like Visage. Medallion of Courage no longer existing feels weird, and blight stone ONLY upgrading into desolator feels kind of wrong. While it ain't much, if you still like to do Solar Crest on Visage, I can recommend using it on one of his birds - it gives the same offensive buff it would to one of your allied heroes, and can seriously shred some damage to both heroes on towers.