Introduction
“The fire starts now.”
Doom is an incredibly versatile melee strength hero, capable of fulfilling any number of roles from utility hero to hard carry. He is well known for his farming capability and his ultimate, Doom, which more often than not will take one enemy hero out of the fight, making teamfights 5 on 4 affairs.
Doom's complete character profile can be found here.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Good farmer
- Versatile hero
- Good burst damage
- Fantastic ultimate
- Gets auras/actives from creeps he consumes
- Good DPS
Cons
- Terrible armour
- Terrible agility gain
- Slow start
- Requires farm
- Severe mana issues
Item Build
Doom has a very flexible item build. To generalise, you primarily want items that give you armour, in order to mitigate Doom’s terrible base armour and woeful armour gain, and items that help you to tank up so that you can stay alive in teamfights. As he’s rarely played as a 1 role carry, and has good DPS without items (thanks in large part to his ability to Devour an Alpha Wolf), damage items are of secondary importance.
Beyond that, however, Doom’s item choices are wide open, and so instead of a single, strict core item build I’ve listed three different suggested builds below.
Early Items
A typical starting build for Doom is as follows, regardless of your core item intentions:
- A set of Tangos, a Stout Shield, a Ring of Protection, and an Iron Branch.
Doom starts with terrible 0.54 base armour, meaning all attacks deal virtually pure damage when dealt against Doom early on, so even the +2 armour from an early Ring of Protection will do wonders for your survivability. It’s well worth upgrading this into a Ring of Basilius at some point.
You’ll want to get basic Boots of Speed as quickly as possible too, and upgrade any Iron Branches you purchased at the start into a Magic Wand.
Core Items
The image on the right displays three common early game builds, which I’ll talk about below: Utility Doom, Ganking Doom, and Jungle Doom (although it is by no means exclusive to those who take Doom into the jungle, it’s the most common scenario in which doom rushes Midas).
Utility Doom
Utility Doom is fairly uncommon outside of competitive Dota, because the typical pub mentality is that Doom is a carry and thus needs damage items. Don’t understand the damage output of a utility Doom, however.
What I mean by utility is basically support items that also synergise well with Doom, namely Mekanism and Arcane Boots.
Arcane Boots will solve your mana issues. At level 1 Doom has a base mana pool of 169. By level 16 this has only risen to 598. The average mana cost of each of your abilities, in order, is: 45/67.5/110/200. Lvl? Death is highly spammable, Devour should be cast whenever it’s off cooldown, Doom is to be used ideally whenever it is off cooldown early on as well, and Scorched Earth is highly useful in teamfights. In short, Doom has serious mana issues and Arcane Boots are highly underrated on him.
The other advantage of purchasing Arcane Boots is it frees you up not only to spam your abilities much more freely but also to purchase items with fairly high mana costs. Mekanism is great for tanking up, whilst also providing benefits for your entire team (hence the description ‘Utility Doom’ for this build). Mekanism gives you +5 to all stats, +5 armour, auras for your allies, and 250 burst healing in a 750 AoE.
Utility Doom makes you more survivable, which means you can actually stand and fight enemies, gives you enough mana to spam your abilities and ensure you have each one available to use whenever you need it, and makes you an amazing teamfighter and pusher.
Ganking Doom
This is a much more common build, and one typically found in public matchmaking. Upgraded Boots of choice here are Phase Boots, for their damage and mobility. Your first big ticket item is an initiation/mobility item. Typically it’s Shadow Blade, but Blink Dagger is also becoming increasingly popular on Doom.
A mobility item like Shadow Blade or Blink Dagger gives you superior initiation potential, allowing you to almost always get the jump on enemies with your ultimate, ensuring you can cast it on the key hero you want to take out of the fight.
Shadow Blade is the more popular of the two options because it also increases your damage output, thanks to the +22 damage,+30 attack speed, and 150 bonus damage upon attacking out of invisibility. The invisibility component of Shadow Blade allows you to gank and can act as a pseudo-escape mechanism in lower tier play.
Greedy Doom
This build is most commonly used by Dooms who jungle, but not exclusively so. Basically your goal is to maximise your early GPM, grabbing a quick Hand of Midas. Between Hand of Midas and Devour, you’ll leave the jungle massively ahead of any other hero on the map in terms of farm… providing you can leave your team out to dry for that span of time.
That’s not to say you’re useless if you go for the greedy build; you can still rotate into your safe lane to gank, and you can always purchase a TP Scroll in case of dives on your allies, but you’ll be much less effective in the short term.
That said, if you’re given the space to go for this greedy build, you’ll become 5 or 6 slotted extremely quickly.
Luxury Items
Regardless of which core item build you opted for above, your next set of recommended items are universally great.
Vladmir’s Offering – Always a good option on Doom, especially if you purchase a Ring of Basilius or if you opted for a utility Doom build. The +5 armour is a nice boost to your terrible base armour, and the life steal and damage auras in particular will benefit both yourself and your team.
Assault Cuirass – The more expensive +armour option that will also make you hit a lot harder. A huge +10 armour and 35 attack speed for yourself, and +5 armour and 20 attack speed for your teammates. The -5 armour that applies to nearby enemies also works on enemy creeps and enemy buildings, making it a great overall teamfight and pushing item.
Crimson Guard – A good defensive/utility item. If you decide to opt for an early-ish Vanguard then later upgrading it into a Crimson Guard is a good way of buffing your inventory in the late game when Vanguard’s usefulness tapers off and inventory slots are at a premium.
So you get a nice chunk of flat health (250), +2 all stats, +5 armor and 6 health regeneration. On top of that you gain a passive Damage Block ability, which gives an 80% chance to block 20-40 damage, and an active Guard ability, which allows you to create a shield which applies to yourself and allies in a 750 unit radius that grants everyone affected by it +2 armor and a 100% chance to block 50 damage.
Crimson Guard is somewhat comparable to Mekanism, but more suited to heroes with low mana pools (following Patch 6.82’s hefty increase in Mekanism’s mana cost). It performs a similar protective and + armor role (albeit granting damage block rather than direct health). If you fear being unable to sustain a mana pool for Mekanism but want to add utility/tankiness to your teamfight then a Crimson Guard is a great option.
Shiva’s Guard – If someone else on your team purchased an Assault Cuirass, or you want even more armour, then go for a Shiva’s Guard. +15 armour, a nice boost to your mana pool, and a good anti-carry aura.
Heaven’s Halberd – A great option if you want to tank up even more whilst also providing utility for your team. 20 strength is a nice boost to your health pool and damage output, whilst 25% evasion means you'll mitigate a lot of damage. As with the last two items I described it also has good overall utility for your team, thanks to the ability to Disarm an enemy physical DPS'er for 3.0-4.5 seconds.
Necronomicon - A very powerful item for pushing. Worth getting if you’re in a pushing line-up, or your team is struggling to break the enemy base. The other advantage of Necronomicon is that at level 3 you get True Sight from the Necro Warrior, and so your team won’t need to rely on Dust/Sentry Wards to counter enemy invisibility.
Another thing worth noting is that the healing effects of Doom’s Scorched Earth ability affect Necronomicon units.
Black King Bar - A great luxury item for any carry/semi-carry, BKB gives you some added damage and health, but most importantly the active Spell Immunity will allow you to stay alive and not get stun-locked or burst down by magic damage during teamfights.
Heart of Tarrasque – Another tank option. My least favoured on Doom, because you sorely need +armour more than the extra health for the most part, but good nonetheless. The +40 strength also increases your damage by 40 as a strength hero.
Drums of Endurance – Gives you a bit of almost everything you need (except +armour) - solid stat gain, attack speed, mobility, and even a team aura. Drums are fairly cheap and easy to build into, so even if you had a bad start you should be able to get them up and running fairly quickly.
Aghanim’s Scepter – Aghanims is alright on Doom, but no more than that really. On top of the stats it provides it Increases the damage and duration of your ultimate (the duration doesn't count down while the target is within 900 range of Doom), but it’s a bit gimmicky and not as useful as, say, an Assault Cuirass, so don’t prioritise it too highly if you do decide to go for it.
Skill Build
The first point is put into Devour, so that you can get an early gold advantage. If you’re jungling the best creep to Devour early on is the Satyr Tormenter, so that you get the +4 hp regeneration from Unholy Aura. Later on you’ll want to consume an Alpha Wolf because his aura and critical strike chance is ridiculously powerful.
Other good neutral creeps to Devour for their abilities early on include Wildwing Rippers (armour aura), Dark Troll Summoners (for Raise Dead to tank the creeps), Hill Trolls (health regeneration), and Ogre Frostmages (Ice Armour). In the mid game Dark Troll Summoners and Centaur Conquerors can be useful for their disables, and of course Alpha Wolfs for their incredible damage bonuses.
Aside from that first point, and always skilling your ultimate, Doom, you can invest your other points wherever you want. Maxing each of his abilities first is viable, so while the image above shows the build I tend to use most often, it is by no means set in stone; feel free to experiment and find a build order that suits you best.
If you decide to prioritise Devour then you max out your early farming capability. Extra levels reduces the mana cost, reduces the cooldown, and increases the gold bonus from using Devour by 25 gold for each extra level. The downside is that, because his other active abilities are also excellent in the early and mid game, you won’t be able to get the most out of your early magic damage output.
Both Scorched Earth and LVL? Death are well worth levelling. Go for the former if you want to deal damage and heal yourself over time, which is especially useful if you’re jungling as Doom or teamfighting, prioritise the latter if you want burst magical damage.
Always skill your ultimate, Doom, at levels 6, 11 and 16. It’s an incredible ultimate, which silences your target and deals huge pure damage over 15 seconds (300/525/750 damage respectively). As it lasts so long, and prevents the chosen target from using items and abilities, it can be used to effectively remove an ability-dependent hero from a teamfight from the get-go, potentially turning it into a 4v5 engagement.
Gameplay Tips
Once you’ve Devoured your ideal creep for its ability/aura, you can avoid replacing that aura by Devouring either lane creeps or neutral creeps that don’t have abilities/auras from that point forwards.
Scorched Earth deals a deceptively large amount of damage over time - 120/216/336/480 – and heals Doom for the same amount. Since it lasts 10/12/14/16 seconds, cast it at the start of teamfights to both allow you to tank a fair bit of damage and deal a lot of AoE damage over time to any enemies within 600 units of Doom.
LVL? Death will deal bonus damage equal to 20% of the target's max health if the enemy's level is a multiple of 6/5/4/3 or 25. Thus if the enemy is level 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24 or 25 they will be dealt the bonus damage.
| Tip: LVL? Death actually mini-stuns, so is always worth skilling fairly on even if you don’t intend to max it until last. You can use it to interrupt channelled abilities or to prevent an enemy TP’ing away. |
Use Doom on one of the enemy cores, or any high-impact enemy heroes that rely on their abilities to be effective in teamfights. This way you force the opposing team to either fight 4 versus 5, or to try and disengage, allowing your team the opportunity to pick off retreating heroes.
Watch out for enemy heroes that tend to build Linken’s Sphere, like Morphling, Weaver or Medusa. Periodically check that they haven’t built one so that you don’t waste your Doom on them. If they do build a Linken’s remember to LVL? Death them first, and save Doom for once the Linken’s has been popped.
Last Updated - Patch 6.82.
