Introduction
“Trees are not so good with motion, you know.”
Treant Protector is a melee strength support hero. He is unique in his ability not only to heal allied buildings (outside of an Omniknight with Aghs) but also to globally heal and protect an allied unit. He is also famed for reportedly being head developer Icefrog’s favourite hero.
Treant Protector's complete character profile can be found here.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- A very unique hero with an unusual skillset
- Huge base damage
- Quite tanky
- He can heal his team’s towers and buildings
- Living Armor is an extremely strong supportive ability
- Has a disable that goes through spell immunity
Cons
- Only has one ability that deals damage, and that is considered underpowered anyway
- Has no stun
- Melee attack range can be problematic for a support
- High mana cost on his nuke
- A very defensive/passive support for the most part
- Need good map awareness and decision making in order to use Living Armor effectively
Item Build
Starting Items
You’re playing as a support, so act like one. Make sure your team has both a Courier and a set of Observer Wards at the start. Often you can split the cost between yourself and another support, but if not then you need to buy both.
After that, for starting items you want to get plenty of regen: a set of Tangos, a Healing Salve, and a Clarity. If someone else on your team bought Wards or Courier at the start then you can grab a couple of Iron Branches and an extra Clarity.
Early Game
Observer Wards are core whenever they’re off cooldown, naturally. Make sure the Courier is upgraded into a Flying Courier when it comes off cooldown at the 3 minute mark as well.
Grab some basic Boots of Speed as soon as possible, and upgrade any Iron Branches you may have into a Magic Wand. Finally, you can round out your early game purchases with a cost-effective Bracer, if you want to be a bit tankier.
Core Items
Arcane Boots really are the upgraded boots of choice for such a mana hungry hero as Treant, who has no in-built mana regeneration ability like Lich. Although Living Armor has a very reasonable mana cost, Leech Seed is very expensive, as is Overgrowth, and Living Armor should be on cooldown more often than not, so you’ll be burning through a lot of mana even before you purchase a Mekanism, which is your next core item.
Mekanism is your priority core pick-up. 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.
Mekanism is an absolutely fantastic item on any support, especially a healing support like Treant Protector. Mekanism is absolutely necessary for your team with its burst AoE heal and armour but 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
Aghanim's Scepter - Nice stat gain, but as with all Aghanim's Scepter recommendations it is great on him because of the way it interacts with your ultimate.
Aghanim's Scepter on Treant actually grants you access to a new ability - Eyes in the Forest - which allows you to enchant a tree, gaining vision in an 800 AoE and allowing said trees to cast Overgrowth when you use it. Not only that but Overgrowths from trees also deal damage. All of this combined makes Aghanim's Scepter a high priority luxury item for Treant Protector.
Blink Dagger – Blink Dagger will be essential for reliably getting off perfect Overgrowths. If your ultimate is proving a big crutch for your team then Blink Dagger is essentially core.
Blink also helps somewhat remedy your poor mobility, but only for the mostpart in offensive situations. For a more defensive and/or team-based mobility item consider…
Force Staff – You can never go wrong with Force Staff on a support hero (assuming you actually use the active!!). A Force Staff can be used to mitigate your lack of mobility and lack of innate positioning ability. It's great for clutch escapes and also gives you even more utility for your teammates (you can use Force on allied heroes, yourself, and enemies).
One of the two mobility items listed above should be considered your top priority luxury item.
Vladmir’s Offering – Your entire team will benefit from the bonus damage, mana regeneration, and armour auras. It’s doubly good if any of your team’s core heroes are melee DPS’ers thanks to the lifesteal aura. And, of course, being melee yourself and having high base damage, you get a lot out of it too.
Drums of Endurance – Great all-round stats to help tank you up, cost-efficient, easy to build into, and gives your entire team bonus attack speed and move speed auras. A great luxury supportive pick-up if no one else on your team has one yet.
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. Good for some decent stat gain as well. Always a solid luxury item for Treant.
Heaven’s Halberd – A good defensive item that is often overlooked. Halberd will prevent a single target attacking anyone on your team for 3-4.5 seconds. On top of that you gain a nice chunk of strength and more survivability.
Assault Cuirass – This is the first of two extremely expensive luxury items on the list. Naturally, as a support hero it’s unlikely you’ll ever acquire sufficient farm in a normal game to ever purchase either of these. However, sometimes you get lucky, or the game goes ultra-late and most heroes get highly farmed. In such situations consider one of these items.
Assault Cuirass is a very strong utility item. If none of your cores have one (or are working towards one), then this will help your team out massively - +20 attack speed for your allies, +5 armour, and -5 armour on enemy heroes.
Shiva’s Guard – The latter of two highly expensive luxury items. +15 armour and +30 intelligence are nice bonuses on top of a 40% enemy attack slow aura and 40% movement slow and 200 magic damage AoE nuke. A good defensive, anti-carry teamfight item that provides a lot of team-wide utility, especially if you have a Blink Dagger (you can Blink in, Overgrowth, and then use the active from Shiva’s Guard).
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.
Situational Items
Boots of Travel – Great for the late game, when you need to free up a slot which would otherwise be taken up by a TP Scroll. With this, you combine your Boots and TP Scroll slot into one, allowing you to put a slot to better use.
Pipe of Insight – Not an ideal pick-up if you bought the team’s Mekanism (having both on one hero is very risky), but always a good item to have if the enemy team has any magic damage (which they almost certainly will). Quick rule of thumb: if you didn’t buy the team’s Mekanism then make Pipe a high priority luxury item.
Medallion of Courage – A good early game option, Medallion will give you 50% mana regeneration and +6 armour (despite having a high health pool, Treant actually has quite poor armour, making Medallion doubly good on him).
The active, Valor, will remove 6 armour from yourself and an enemy unit, making it a strong utility item if your team has a lot of physical damage early on. It also allows for early Roshan attempts.
Refresher Orb – Treant’s ultimate isn’t as devastatingly powerful as other heroes who pick-up Refresher Orb, like Tidehunter, Enigma or Warlock. It’s a fantastic disable because it goes through spell immunity, but it doesn’t deal damage and is more situationally useful than the ultimates for those other heroes. The cooldown is a pretty reasonable 70 seconds as well.
Nonetheless, Refresher Orb can be a good pick-up on Treant. If Overgrowth is making the crucial difference in teamfights that allows your team to stay ahead, then consider a Refresher for the double Overgrowth capability.
Skill Build
Nature’s Guise is an invisibility spell. It is skilled and maxed last. It allows Treant to turn himself or an allied unit invisible when within 375 units of a tree. The invisibility lasts for 15/30/45/60 seconds and grants that unit a bonus 10% move speed.
Nature’s Guise has a number of downsides which makes it the worst invisibility skill in the game. The first and most obvious is that the unit in question must remain within 375 units of a tree at all times, or their invisibility will break. Secondly, it has a lengthy fade time of 2 seconds after cast, during which time the unit will not be invisible, thus limiting its potential as an escape ability. Finally, Treant’s own lengthy cast animation (0.3 seconds for Nature’s Guise) also makes it less than ideal for performing clutch escapes.
Leech Seed is a damage over time nuke and minor healing ability. It is skilled and maxed second in most cases, unless you intend to roam from level 1, in which case you skill Leech Seed first.
Leech Seed slows a target enemy unit by 28% for 4.5 seconds and deals 90/180/270/360 damage over 6 seconds. This damage heals allied units within a 500 unit radius of the affected enemy unit to the same amount.
Living Armor is Treant’s signature ability. It is always skilled and maxed first, unless you a roaming from level 1, in which case you skill Leech Seed first but from then on return to maxing Living Armor first.
Living Armor is a global heal and protection ability. It will block 4/5/6/7 instances of damage to the tune of 20/40/60/80 damage inflicted on the allied unit. It also increases the unit’s health regeneration by 4/7/10/13 health for 15 seconds.
An incredibly strong early game defensive support ability, Living Armor will allow you to keep allied heroes alive much longer than they have any right to be kept alive. Your mid getting ganked and tower dove? Use LA on them and give them the chance to turn the fight around. One of your allies aggressively diving the enemy at an early stage? Use Living Armor on them to keep them going.
It will block up to 80/200/360/560 damage and heal for a total of 60/105/150/195 over the 15 second duration. Oh, and it works on your towers and buildings too, so be sure to heal up buildings that have been chipped away at.
Overgrowth is Treant’s ultimate. It is always skilled (levels 6, 11 and 16). Overgrowth disables enemy units within a 675 unit AoE of Treant for 3/3.75/4.5 seconds.
As it goes through spell immunity, prevents enemy heroes from moving, and prevents invisibility , blinking, or attacking, it provides great lockdown in teamfights.
Eyes in the Forest is a bonus ability which you acquire if you purchase an Aghanim's Scepter. It allows you to enchant a tree within 160 units of your hero, granting you unobstructed vision in an 800 AoE around the tree(s) in question.
On top of that, if Overgrowth is cast, units within a 800 radius of a summoned tree will be affected by Overgrowth and will receive 175 magic damage a second for the duration of Overgrowth.
Gameplay Tips
Although one of the weaker invisibility spells in the game, Nature’s Guise certainly has its uses. It can, for example, work as an escape mechanism if the enemy team lacks detection, although do keep in mind that there’s a 2 second fade time on the ability.
| Remember: You can use Nature’s Guise on allies. Don’t forget this. If an ally is caught out of position and attempting to escape you can use it to turn them invisible so long as they’re within 375 units of a tree. |
Perhaps its most under-utilised use is as an initiation tool for your team or for your own ultimate. Since you can make your entire team invisible using Nature’s Guise it can act as a superior form of Smoke of Deceit, or perhaps more accurately it works in similar fashion to Mirana’s ultimate, Moonlight Shadow.
| Tip: You can use items and Treant’s other abilities whilst invisible under the effects of Nature’s Guise. New players often don’t realise this, and so will avoid using abilities for fear of breaking their cover – don’t worry, you’ll stay invisible! |
Trees are extremely prevalent on the Dota 2 map. If you’re moving through the map later in the game, pre-emptively use Guise on yourself and try to remain within 375 units of trees at all times. It boosts your move speed and gives you invisibility, allowing you to scout out fog of war in some degree of safety (so long as the enemy lacks detection).
Leech Seed deals 90/180/270/360 damage/heal. This isn’t particularly high, but remember that in teamfights the heal can affect multiple allied heroes, so don’t forget to cast it if you have enough mana to do so.
| Tip: If an enemy hero has been hit with Leech Seed and then subsequently turns invisible, you can track their movements by looking out for the healing pulses. |
Early on you need to keep an eye on the status of all lanes as Treant Protector. Cast Living Armor on any ally who is dropping low on health, who is diving aggressively, or is being dived at their own tower by the enemy team.
| Tip: You don’t actually need to click on the allied hero or tower in order to cast Living Armor on them – simply clicking on a hero or tower’s general location on the mini-map will cause Treant to cast it on them. |
If the early stages are fairly inactive, you can use Living Armor to help top up the health of allies who are running low on consumables.
If it’s quite an action-packed early game then you’ll probably need to avoid such casual uses of LA and will need to save it for when allies are in mortal danger. One of the ability’s major downsides is its lengthy cooldown early on (36/26/20/14 seconds); the last thing you want is for it to be on cooldown when one of your cores gets in trouble.
Later on in the game, or if there’s a good period of downtime early on, use it to keep your towers at full health. Any that have taken chip damage can be topped up. The same applies to your barracks and ancient later on in the game.
Overgrowth has a fairly low cooldown for a big teamfight ultimate, at 70 seconds, and so doesn’t need to be saved for the perfect opportunity like Enigma’s Black Hole or Naga Siren’s Song, for example.
Remember that Overgrowth does not deal damage, it merely disables enemies. Use it as a large AoE pseudo-stun or a teamfight ultimate providing your team will follow up on it.
Overgrowth goes through spell immunity, but if a unit becomes spell immune whilst under its effects then they will be freed from its disable. Thus Overgrowth can be a good way to force an enemy to pop their BKB prematurely or, on the flipside, to lockdown an enemy who has just activated their BKB.
Overgrowth prevents: movement, blinks, attacking, invisibility, Mirana’s Leap, Alchemist’s Chemical Rage, Slark’s Shadow Dance, and Undying’s Flesh Golem. It does not prevent heroes using other abilities, and does not prevent Phantom Assassin’s Phantom Strike.
Eyes in the Forest will only cause Overgrowth to deal damage if the heroe(s) in question are within 800 units of an enchanted tree.
If an enemy has True Sight, they will be able to see visual effects on both the affected tree and the 800 area of effect around it, and will then be able to destroy the tree and remove the effect.
Last Updated - Patch 6.83.
