Introduction
“Rogue Knight at your service!”
Sven is a versatile melee strength hero capable of being played as a carry or a support thanks to his ability to provide utility to the team and huge DPS largely independent of items. With a potent AoE stun, an oft-underestimated aura ability, and an ultimate that has the ability to more than double his damage he poses a large physical threat even if played in a support role.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Fantastic stun
- Versatile hero – can be played as a support/utility or a carry
- Good passive cleave farming and pushing ability
- Great armour and movespeed aura ability
- Huge physical DPS even without items thanks to his ultimate
Cons
- Melee attack range
- Susceptible to being kited
- Huge mana issues
- Largely dependent on ultimate for DPS duties
Item Build
Sven is very versatile in terms of roles. He is more than capable of being played as a utility/support hero thanks to his stun and relative item independence, although he can just as easily be played as a farming carry with insane physical damage output. This guide will cover both roles in detail, and will have separate headings to indicate which role I’m discussing as I go through.
Utility/Support 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, Gauntlets of Strength, 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.
Carry Starting Items
In public matchmaking you’re likely to face a certain degree of pressure on the lane (in contrast to most professional safe lanes) and so a build that errs on the safe side is advisable:
- A set of Tangos, a Healing Salve, a Stout Shield, and 2x Iron Branches.
This gives you plenty of starting regen, a Stout Shield to block harass, and Iron Branches to give you some starting stats.
Alternatively, if you’re confident that either you’ll be facing up against an easy offlane opponent or that your team can keep you well protected in the lane, you can swap the Stout Shield out for a Quelling Blade, and get an extra Iron Branch. This is a greedier starting build but will make last hitting easier.
Utility/Support 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 and then upgrade any Iron Branches you have into a Magic Wand.
At this stage there are a couple of early item purchases you may consider making, especially if your farm is poor and you’ll struggle to get upgraded boots in a decent amount of time. These are Soul Ring and Urn of Shadows.
Both are excellent on a roaming support, so if you do decide to roam and gank early on then at least one of these is highly recommended. Soul Ring gives you burst mana regen, whilst Urn gives you burst healing and some stats on top of more basic mana regeneration.
Carry Early Game
Grab your basic Boots of Speed and then consider your options. If the lane is quite comfortable and you’re getting good last hits go for a Hand of Midas rush in order to really accelerate your farm.
If you’re not getting great farm then skip over the Hand of Midas and get straight to work on your core items, starting with your upgraded boots of choice (either Power Treads or Phase Boots). Typically Power Treads are the boots of choice, for the extra health and attack speed and carry potential, but as Sven is often kited quite badly Phase Boots are an alternative option, giving you the superior mobility to help cut down on kiting.
Finish off your early game pick-ups by upgrading your Iron Branches into a Magic Wand.
Utility/Support Core
As always, ensure that Observer Wards are bought whenever they come off cooldown.
Arcane Boots are the upgraded boots of choice for a support/utility Sven. Lack of mana/mana regen is one of the biggest drawbacks to support Sven (and the reason he’s a less than ideal candidate to purchase the team’s Mekanism). Arcane Boots will help significantly in this respect, allow you to spam Storm Hammer and also provide burst mana regeneration for your team.
Talking of Mekanism. It’s situational. As one of the best teamfight items in the game (and certainly the best in the early and mid game) it’s core for your team, but Sven is not an ideal candidate to purchase it. Ideally your team will consist of either a core who often goes Mekanism (such as Viper), or has a secondary support more suited to purchasing it. If it doesn’t, you should build it yourself, but be careful to manage your mana around it.
If you can get away with not building the team’s Mekanism then you can plump straight for a Blink Dagger, for initiation and ganking purposes.
God Strength into Blink into Storm Hammer is a disgustingly strong combo, even for a support hero (indeed; especially on a support hero! If you are playing the role of initiator then your death after initiation is largely immaterial to your team’s success in the fight, meanwhile you’ll have gotten off a significant amount of damage in the immediate follow-up to using Storm Hammer, far more than any support hero has a right to dish out).
Force Staff is a viable alternative to Blink Dagger, but unlike a lot of supports that benefit from both I do not recommend it over Blink on Sven. Although Force Staff provides more utility it is inferior as a chasing, ganking and initiation positioning tool, which is the primary purpose of a mobility item on Sven.
Carry Core
A highly popular core item on carry Sven in public matchmaking is Mask of Madness. Although considered a ‘noob build’ by many, it is a good fall-back option to get some good DPS off the back of poor farm. You want to make sure you don’t use it unless you’re certain you wish to go on the offensive; whilst you get an incredible 100% attack speed and 30% move speed boost from MoM that allows you to deal obscene amounts of damage with your ultimate, you will also take 30% more damage, making it a very risky option. MoM is very situational, in my opinion.
A more stable, but less common item purchase is Armlet of Mordiggian. Despite the recent nerf, which made Armlet toggling slightly less effective, it’s still very much possible to toggle. Armlet also gives you a really nice damage boost, additional armour and health, and health regeneration, on top of the active toggle ability. Tip:
| ‘Toggling your Armlet’ is the process by which you turn off and on Armlet’s active ability in order to quickly regenerate your health when you’re low, and effectively save your life when you would otherwise die. The key is to turn Armlet off when you’re at very low health and expect a killing blow, but to do so before such a blow hits. Then straight away turn it back on, so that your health pool regenerates. If timed correctly - between instances of damage - you will regain enough health to survive most auto-attacks/abilities. |
Regardless of which you go for, your second core item is Black King Bar. It naturally makes you tankier and gives you some additional damage as well. Most importantly you have the ability to become Spell Immune, which is crucial for Sven, who will be at the forefront of engagements dishing out incredible DPS, making him a prime target for magic casters and especially stuns.
Used after you’ve cast your ultimate, enemies will be forced to try and kite you because not many heroes can stand toe-to-toe with a spell immune, ultimate-buffed Sven unless they’ve heavily out-farmed him.
Utility/Support Luxury Items
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. Always a good luxury item on supports. It helps also that even as a core, Sven will often get Drums.
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.
Aghanim's Scepter - Some decent stat gain but most importantly the recent ultimate buff makes this a great option on a support/utility Sven. Aghanim's on Sven means that God's Strength grants an allied aura (900 area of effect) for 50/75/100% of base damage, which is an absolutely fantastic buff for your team's cores in teamfights.
Black King Bar –It will make you a lot more tanky and give you Spell Immunity as well, protecting you from spell casters and stuns.
Medallion of Courage – A really good cost-effective support item. The mana regeneration will help a lot, especially if you’re roaming, and the minus armour is seriously under-estimated in public games; it will allow you to dish out decent DPS even though you’re a support, and that’s before factoring in any back-up your allies provide. Also opens up the possibility for an early Roshan for your team.
Heaven’s Halberd – I love picking this up on non-traditional supports like Alchemist or Sven. At this stage of the game you’re actually becoming difficult to deal with yourself and transitioning into a semi-carry, so a Heaven’s Halberd (which doubles up as both a good carry item and a support item) is an ideal pick-up. It will make you even harder to take down and also gives you the ability to disarm enemies for 3-4.5 seconds.
Pipe of Insight - As Sven doesn’t usually pick up Mekanism, this makes Pipe more viable as a luxury item. By this stage in the game your mana issues are much less prominent and so you can afford to pick up a team-based utility item that requires mana usage. If you bought the team’s Mekanism, however, avoid Pipe; it’s almost always a bad idea to focus both big team support items on a single hero.
Assault Cuirass – To be honest you’re going to struggle to complete an item like AC in all but the longest of long games. If the game really goes the distance it’s a perfect utility item, providing important auras for your team and freeing up slots for your cores to opt for items better tailored to themselves. At this point you can transition into more of a DPS’er role, which is one of the advantages of support heroes that are traditionally core heroes.
Carry Luxury Items
Daedalus – All-in damage build. A huge chunk of damage and a chance to crit, which when combined with your ultimate makes you an incredible DPS’er.
Assault Cuirass – As a right-click carry Assault Cuirass’s attack speed and minus armour aura both make your carry potential go through the roof. And it benefits your entire team. Definitely a high priority luxury pick-up.
Abyssal Blade - A nice chunk of health and damage, but most importantly two additional forms of lockdown that go through Spell Immunity – an active ability that will give you 2 seconds of stun and a passive that gives you a 25% chance of a 1.4 second stun. This is extremely useful on Sven, who often faces significant kiting.
Vladmir’s Offering – Vlad's is a great pick-up if you're not your team's primary core or if you’re struggling to farm up. If your team includes another melee carry or semi-carry then it's a great cost-effective item that provides enormous utility for your team.
Satanic – Satanic gives you direct damage benefits as well as increased survivability. The chance to heal yourself back up when low on health using the Unholy Rage active makes it similar to the health effects of Roshan's Cheese. As long as you're able to attack, you basically get your health pool completely regenerated, and since Black King Bar is core on Sven you usually will be able to.
Heart of Tarrasque – Will make you a full on tank. Your health pool will be enormous and you’ll also hit a lot harder. A good luxury item if you feel you’re falling in teamfights too quickly, but I prefer…
Heaven’s Halberd – If you do feel you die too quickly in teamfights consider Heaven’s Halberd instead of Heart of Tarrasque. You get a nice chunk of health, damage, and bonus effective health (through evasion), but you also become an anti-carry thanks to the Disarm active.
Utility/Support Situational Items
As mentioned earlier, Soul Ring and Urn of Shadows are both potential early item pick-ups that work well on a mana-hungry roaming support like Sven. Mekanism is also a situational pick-up (the situation being no one else on your team is building into one).
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.
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.
Carry Situational Items
As mentioned earlier, Hand of Midas is a situational early game pick up if you’re getting good farm and little in the way of pressure on your lane. Mask of Madness is also situational – some prefer it to Armlet of Mordiggian on Sven, whilst others vehemently ridicule it.
Drums of Endurance – Half situational, half luxury. If things start off a bit rocky, you fail to get much in the way of farm, or you find the game is action-packed with hardly any downtime for just farming creep waves, Drums is a great option. It's cost-efficient, gives you decent stats, and is extremely easy to build into so you won't lose much unreliable gold upon death.
Boots of Travel – When you are at that stage of the game where you’ve ran out of item slots then swap out your initial set of boots for Boots of Travel. It frees up a slot you would otherwise have reserved for a TP Scroll and makes you much less susceptible to split-push in the super late game.
Utility/Support Skill Build
Both support and carry Sven always skills and maxes Storm Hammer first. Your only stun, it deals a nice chunk of magic damage and stuns for 2 seconds both the chosen target and any units within a 255 unit radius of them upon impact. Additional levels increase the damage, which scales from 100 to 325.
Storm Hammer is the reason Sven is viable as a support. One of the better stuns in the game, it not only always deals a flat 2 second stun but does so in an AoE, making it great in clumped up teamfights. With a cooldown of just 13 seconds it’s also somewhat spammable (most of the time you’ll get at least two off in a teamfight).
There are two major downsides to Storm Hammer. The first, and most substantial as far as support Sven goes, is the high mana cost of 140 mana on a hero with a woeful mana pool (just 182 base mana). It means you will be unable to get off more than 1-2 Storm Hammers in the early running. For this reason support Svens often get some early points in stats, to give them a nice chunk of mana to help support Storm Hammer. It’s also why burst mana regen items like Soul Ring and Arcane Boots are good pick-ups on support Sven.
The other downside is that Storm Hammer can be disjointed. It has a fairly obvious telegraph of its use and travels quite slowly for a stun, which means that highly mobile heroes with Blink abilities like Anti-Mage or Queen of Pain, or anyone who purchases a Blink Dagger, will be able to dodge Sven’s stun if they time their Blink appropriately. Being magic-damage based it is also blocked by Spell Immunity (and therefore BKB) as well as Linken’s Sphere, which makes it less reliable in mid and late game engagements when such items will generally be out in force.
Great Cleave is always skilled and maxed last when playing Sven as a utility or support hero. This passive imbues Sven’s attacks with cleave (much like an item like Battle Fury does). Additional levels increase the damage dealt by the cleave (from an initial 20% to 65%). Cleave is primarily used to help flash farm creeps and stacked jungle camps (something support Sven will rarely be doing) and to cleave enemy heroes in teamfights, which is especially useful against illusion-based carries like Chaos Knight or Phantom Lancer (again, not a role utility Sven fits into anyway, at least not until the late game). For these reasons it is not skilled until much later in the game.
Warcry is an active aura ability. For a flat 25 mana cost it increases the armour and move speed of both Sven and any allies within a 900 unit radius of him for 8 seconds. Additional levels increases the bonus armour and reduces the ability’s cooldown. Warcry is a very under-estimated ability. The bonus armour is really quite substantial at the start of teamfights – a bonus 16 (yes, 16!) to each ally within 900 units of yourself, and the increased move speed is pretty good also. The only real downside is that it lasts a mere 8 seconds, so is only useful for short engagements.
Warcry on support/utility Sven is not usually skilled until level 4 (you will want to be saving your mana for Storm Hammer, and could do with a point or two in Stats early on), but is maxed second, so that you can get the most out of it by the point in the game where you have mana to support its use ahead of ganks and teamfights. Just remember to always use it before those skirmishes (or during if necessary) and not to ignore it; that armour buff is truly considerable!
Sven’s ultimate, God’s Strength is always skilled (levels 6, 11 and 16). This gives Sven an incredible damage increase (100-200%) when activated for 25 seconds. A fairly short cooldown for an ultimate (80 seconds), means Sven can use this whenever he needs to, the only downside is the mana cost which is quite hefty for someone with a terrible base mana pool (00/150/200 mana respectively).
It’s important, as support/utility Sven, that you always have enough mana left to use Storm Hammer, but so long as you do then God’s Strength is more than worth using; it gives even a Sven without much in the way of damage items good damage potential in teamfights, which for a support is fantastic to have.
Carry Skill Build
As with support/utility Sven, carry Sven always skills and maxes Storm Hammer first. It’s such a powerful lockdown ability with its relatively short cooldown (13 seconds), good damage (100-325) and decent duration (2 seconds at all levels), and that’s even without factoring in the AoE effects of the stun, that it is crucial to skill no matter what role you’re playing.
Storm Hammer is especially important in allowing you to get within range to attack an enemy and cut down on kiting, which enemies will often, maddeningly be able to do against Sven to good effect unless he is able to stun them.
Great Cleave is skilled and maxed last. As it imbues your attacks with a 300 radius cleave ability you will want to avoid skilling it during the lane phase, otherwise you will push the creep wave towards the enemy tower, giving the enemy offlaner an easy time of it and putting yourself in a riskier position on the battlefield. Start skilling it only once the laning phase has broken down, and then put it to good effect clearing out stacked jungle camps and creep waves.
Warcry, your active aura ability which provides yourself and your teammates with a huge chunk of bonus armour and movement speed is skilled and maxed second of all, following Storm Hammer. Is it shortly before initiating with a gank, or just before a teamfight to get a nice injection of movespeed and an almost over-powered amount of bonus armour (+16 at level 4 is an incredible buff for one hero, let alone the whole team).
The only downside of Warcry, really, is its short duration. Although at level 4 the cooldown is a mere 14 seconds, the ability maintains a stable 8 second duration at all levels, which means it’ll only be useful for quick hit and run ganks or short skirmishes; in extended teamfights the buff will wear off all too quickly.
God’s Strength is always skilled (levels 6, 11 and 16). It gives an incredible damage buff to Sven of 100/150/200% bonus damage. On a carry Sven this means you’ll have absolutely insane damage output when it is active and enemies will more often than not be forced to retreat or attempt to kite you (this is where the lockdown from Storm Hammer can help a lot of the time).
As with Warcry, the only downside is its duration, which is 25 seconds. This makes it great for short engagements and ganks (or counter ganks), but less useful in extended engagements or in situations where the enemy can dis-engage or kite you for its duration before then counter-attacking once the buff’s duration ends. This puts a lot pressure on you to use it judiciously and not waste it by popping it too early, lest you be without a significant source of your DPS for the next fight.
Gameplay Tips
Storm Hammer is blocked by Linken’s Sphere only if you target the holder of it or the person who currently has its spellblock ability. Remember, though, that the stun has a 255 AoE effect, and this will affect Linken’s Sphere holders also, so try to target a nearby enemy instead of wasting it on popping the Linken’s.
Great Cleave’s cleave damage is reduced by armour type but not by armour value, making the cleave damage itself greater than if you were right clicking the enemy directly in many cases. This is why Sven and Battle Fury (for the cleave) are often popular in Dota 2’s unique season game modes that features tanky bosses.
A good ganking tip when targeting a hero who has an escape mechanism is to use Warcry shortly before revealing yourself and using this to close the distance between you before using Storm Hammer, rather than just using Storm Hammer at max range and then being forced to close the distance. Because the stun’s duration is just 2 seconds you don’t want to waste that precious lockdown time on moving towards them when you could be right clicking them if you’d closed the gap before stunning.
Warcry should really not be under-estimated. It gives any allied unit within 900 units of Sven not only a decent movespeed buff but also up to 16 bonus armour. 16 x 5 = 80 bonus armour for your team, an absolutely enormous amount.
God’s Strength is a massive damage steroid, but the percentage increase ‘only’ buffs Sven’s base damage and Sven’s primary attribute (strength); it does NOT increase the raw bonus damage from items.
Last Updated - Patch 6.83.
