Introduction
“Vengeance flies beside me.”
Vengeful Spirit is a fantastic support hero. She has a strong stun, good positioning capability, an oft-under-estimated teamfight and pushing AoE skill, and one of the best scaling auras in the game. She is usually played as a 4th or 5th position support and has a strong early ganking/roaming presence.
Occasionally in competitive Dota she is played as a carry, but this trend has fallen of drastically as the game’s hero pool has expanded; in public matchmaking carry VS is not advised.
You can find our detailed character profile for Vengeful Spirit here.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Great stun
- Strong positioning ultimate
- Good support for push line-ups
- Fantastic scaling damage aura
- Great roaming support & ganker
- Scales quite well for a support – is even capable of transitioning into a semi-carry if necessary
Cons
- Slow projectile stun can be dodged by mobile heroes
- Fairly slow move speed
- Aura will push the lane if skilled early on
- Wave of Terror feels somewhat lacklustre
- Range on ultimate is short at level 1; she really needs a second level in it for it to be most useful
Item Build
Starting Items
As a support hero it’s your job to ensure that the Courier and/or Observer Wards are bought at the start of the game. Usually these duties will be split between yourself and another hero on your team, but you can’t always guarantee this in public games. If no one else ponies up the gold for one then you should bite the bullet and buy both for your team.
Good starting items if there’s another support on your team:
Courier or Observer Wards, a Set of Tangos, a Healing Salve, Ring of Protection, and an Iron Branch.
And if you’re forced to solo support:
Courier, Observer Wards, a set of Tangos, a Healing Salve, and an Iron Branch.
Early Game
Ensure that the Courier is upgraded into a Flying Courier when it comes off cooldown at the 3 minute mark. Also ensure that Observer Wards are always purchased when they’re off cooldown.
Get your Boots of Speed up and running as quickly as possible. Vengeful Spirit has quite poor base movespeed (295) and she’s quite squishy, so without Boots of Speed you may end up being easy to pick off and you won’t be able to effectively roam and gank.
Upgrade any Iron Branches you have into a Magic Wand, and the Ring of Protection into a Ring of Basilius.
Core Items
Again, keep ensuring that Observer Wards are bought up whenever they’re off cooldown.
For upgraded Boots you have a few options: Tranquil Boots, Arcane Boots, or Power Treads. Tranquils are great if you’re going to be roaming a lot in the early game, as they give you good burst move speed heading into a gank and when rotating between lanes, and very strong health regeneration when not in combat. They’re also the cheapest option, making them a good budget purchase when you’re struggling to get farm.
Arcane Boots are more utility-oriented and are especially good if you are the person on the team to build a Mekanism (highly recommended if no one else is going to build into one). They also ensure you can spam your stun and Wave of Terror constantly, and will help out your entire team when you come together to push or gank.
Power Treads are my least favoured option on Vengeful Spirit. They help you to tank up a bit, giving you a nice health pool boost, and if you’re not playing a support role they allow you to transition into a semi-carry, but this is not a recommended strategy for VS in public matchmaking.
If there are no more viable Mekanism carriers on your team that will get it up much faster than you (such as a mid-Viper, or a jungle Chen), then Mekanism should be your go-to core item. Be sure to check with your team to see if anyone else intends to build one before you get started on it. If someone else does intend to build it then you can move straight onto a luxury item pick-up.
Luxury Items
Force Staff will significantly improve your mobility and make you feel less vulnerable. It’s an amazing escape tool for someone who is naturally very squishy and slow, and can be used on allies and enemies, making it a great play-making item for clutch saves or to Force an enemy into bad positioning.
Medallion of Courage is easy to build into and gives you a nice chunk of armour as well as mana regen, making it a good support pick-up. It is also a fantastic pick up for your team if you intend to Rosh early, or if the enemy team has a Linken's Sphere holder (use it as a cheap way to pop the Linkens).
Ring of Aquila is a fairly natural extension to a Ring of Basilius if you bought that item in the early game. Supports are generally starved for both cash and inventory space, so Aquila being a cost effective stat item that also allow you to put a slot you’ve already occupied to better use makes it a good item to consider.
Vladmir’s Offering – Alternatively (or as well as), a Ring of Basilius can be upgraded into a Vlad’s. This is a great item to pick up on a support if one of your team’s cores is a melee hero. The life steal, damage, and armour auras are all significantly benefit not just them but your entire team. Drums of Endurance are a great option because they give you team bonus attack speed and move speed auras, whilst at the same time giving you plenty of stats and being easy to build into (since the components are so cheap you can buy them up whenever you have the spare unreliable gold, meaning you won’t lose much gold when you die). If you felt it necessary to purchase a Bracer in the early game in order to tank up a bit then Drums are a natural extension to your inventory.
Necronomicon - Great if you’re part of a pushing line-up or your team is struggling to break the base. Also a great item for teamfights and for countering any invis enemy heroes.
Ghost Scepter - 4 seconds of physical immunity will feel like a lifetime to the enemy carry. It will buy both yourself and your team a lot of time. Always a good pick-up if you find yourself dying quickly to right clicks.
Heaven’s Halberd – A good defensive item that is often overlooked. While Ghost Scepter makes you invulnerable to enemy physical attacks for 4 seconds, Halberd will prevent them attacking anyone on your team for 3-4.5 seconds. On top of that you gain a nice chunk of strength and survivability.
Desolator – Usually I wouldn’t recommend a damage item on a support, but Vengeful Spirit can pull it off. The minus armour combos well with her Wave of Terror. If no one else on your team bought one you can definitely consider it. It will make your own damage contribution to teamfights far from irrelevant, makes it easier to break the base (the minus armour works on buildings too), and the minus armour will help your carries to take down enemy heroes.
Situational Items
Sentry Wards, Dust of Appearance, Gem of True Sight – all-important detection. You’ll need at least one of these in your inventory if the enemy line-up features an invis hero. Sentry Wards will also allow you to deward rune spots, and Gem will give you superior vision going into the mid and late game.
Smoke of Deceit – If you roam with another support in the early stages of the game a Smoke will allow you to do so more quickly and without being spotted by enemy wards. Smoke will also come in handy in the post-laning phase if your team wants to gank as 5.
Skill Build
Skill Magic Missile first; your only stun, it provides decent lockdown and good damage. Extra levels in Magic Missile slightly increases the duration of the stun (from 1.45 seconds to 1.75 seconds) and greatly increases its damage (from 100 at level 1 to 325 at level 4). I consider these benefits more than worth it, and always max Magic Missile first; in the early game it is your most powerful ability, so is well worth prioritising.
Wave of Terror is skilled second, and I get two early points in it, but tend to max it last. This is situational, and often people prefer to max it before maxing her Vengeance Aura, but I am not one of those people.
Allow me to explain why:
Vengeance Aura gives VS a 900 unit radius bonus damage aura. The damage is percentage based, which means that the additional damage is going to be quite minor in the early stages of the game, but it will scale superbly as your team levels up. Furthermore the aura applies to creeps, and so early points in it will push your creep wave towards the enemy tower. For these reasons, it’s best avoided early on unless you intend to exclusively roam with a hero who has high base damage, but is by far the better skill heading into the mid and late game.
Contrast that with Wave of Terror. Wave of Terror will also push the lane – it provides a 1400 unit range and 300 unit radius minus armour debuff to enemies and a small amount of pure damage (30 through to 90 once maxed) – but only if you use it on creeps. As an active, you have control over its usage, and thus can use it only when you want to. Its damage, although direct, is nonetheless largely insignificant, but the minus armour debuff is very useful, especially for pushes and teamfights.
In conclusion, therefore, Wave of Terror is the better early game option, but its effects do not scale nearly as well as Vengeance Aura’s. The main downside of the Aura is that in the early game its damage bonus will be minor and it will push the wave. As such, you want to be skilling Vengeance Aura when your team is ready to push or when the laning phase has broken down. Accordingly, although I do not skill Aura until level 8 in most cases, once I do skill it I focus on maxing it. This leaves you with 2 points in Wave of Terror, which can then be maxed by level 14 (as shown in the image above).
Some people prefer to simply max out Wave of Terror before focussing on her Aura, but I would suggest only doing so if the laning phase is stretching on and you want to continue to strictly control creep equilibrium.
Vengeful Spirit’s ultimate, Nether Swap, is always skilled (levels 6, 11 and 16). This ability, which goes through Spell Immunity, allows you to swap position with another hero (be it an allied hero or an enemy). This allows you to save allies (either by sacrificing yourself in place of one of your team’s cores, or hopefully through switching places with ally who is close to death but in a situation that you yourself are unlikely to die in), or swap enemies into disadvantageous positions (for example, if they are retreating you can bring them back to your position, or if you are in a so-called Mexican stand-off you can pick one of their cores out and swap them into your team; whilst this will likely get you killed, it will also likely kill off the higher priority enemy core in the process).
Nether Swap’s range is frustratingly short at level 1 (700 units), but once you hit levels 2 and 3 (950 units and 1200 units respectively), you will be able to swap positions with a hero from outside of normal vision range, meaning you’re less likely to telegraph your intentions to the enemy and can swap into much more optimal situations.
Gameplay Tips
Magic Missile is a good nuke as well as a stun if maxed. At level 4 it will stun for 1.75 seconds and deal 325 damage, making it one of the best support abilities in the game. The cooldown is a respectable 10 seconds, making it somewhat spammable as well.
Try to always cast Wave of Terror at the start of teamfights. The damage is fairly minimal, but the minus armour debuff is deceptively strong and, because it lasts 20 seconds, it is likely to last the entire duration of most teamfights. It has great range (1400 units), so you should be able to catch multiple enemy heroes with it.
Wave of Terror can be used to scout areas you do not have vision of and which you fear may be the staging ground for an enemy trap. The skill provides vision for the full 1400 range of the ability, making it a good scouting ability as well as a teamfight one.
Vengeance Aura’s affects are minimal early on because it is percentage based. As most heroes have low starting damage it will do little to bolster their damage output, but the advantage of this is that it scales superbly into the late game, making it one of the best auras in the game. Try to stay alive as long as possible in mid and late game teamfights, and always remain within range of your carry and/or cores, so that they benefit as much as possible from your aura.
| Note: As of patch 6.81, when Vengeful Spirit is slain her killer is inflicted with a negative Vengeance Aura, which decreases the damage of her killer and their nearby allies until she revives. It takes effect in a 900 AoE of the killer and is based on the level of Vengeance Aura. |
Nether Swap is a very versatile positioning ability that has both offensive and defensive uses. Don’t forget that you can target allies with it, so you can sacrifice yourself in place of one of your team’s cores if they are close to death; this is almost always a good trade to make.
Nether Swap goes through Spell Immunity (and thus Black King Bar). This makes it a superb counter to powerful channelled abilities like Enigma’s Black Hole or Witch Doctor’s Death Ward, even if they have a Black King Bar.
A typical VS combo is to Nether Swap a target, then follow it up with a Magic Missile, followed by Wave of Terror. This forces the enemy into poor positioning, then stuns them, and applies a minus armour debuff, making them easy pickings for your teammates.
Last Updated - Patch 6.83.
