Introduction
“Make way for your Queen.”
Queen of Pain is a ranged intelligence ganker. With incredibly high burst magic damage and mobility, she makes for an excellent mid hero who can quickly gank the side lanes and burst down squishy heroes with her three offensive abilities, two of which deal AoE damage.
Queen of Pain has traditionally been a staple mid pick-up, especially in competitive Dota. However, her low win rate has led to a fall off in her popularity, and she has been eclipsed by other heroes in the pool. Nonetheless, if played well and able to gank successfully, she can quickly snowball out of control and dictate the pace of the game.
Queen of Pain's complete character profile can be found here.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Strong mid laner
- Incredibly strong ganker
- Good mobility
- High burst damage
- Plenty of AoE damage for teamfights and clearing waves
- Can snowball out of control
Cons
- Very level dependent
- Mana issues
- Fairly squishy
- Effectiveness of abilities trails off in the late game
- Mana intensive
- Deceptively high skill floor No disable
Item Build
Starting Items
Queen of Pain is best played as a solo mid, where you want to get a quick Bottle and some decent experience (and levels) before looking for opportunities to gank. That said, she is perfectly viable as a solo laner if need be. A good all-round starting build is:
- A set of Tangos, 3x Iron Branches, and a Mantle of Intelligence.
This gives you good regen as well as solid starting stats, which will allow you to compete for last hits effectively. You’ll also have enough gold leftover to allow you to get a Bottle quite quickly.
Early Game
As already noted, your aim is to get a Bottle as quickly as possible (ideally before the 2 minute rune spawn). Ahead of the rune spawn timer (remember runes spawn every even minute) start to push your wave out. QoP is able to push fairly effectively by using her Scream of Pain ability to assist in farming creep waves. With the wave pushed towards the enemy tower you’re free to check for the rune – using Blink to help ensure it if necessary - and if your lane opponent does choose to contest it they will miss out on valuable experience and gold from the pushed-in creep wave.
After that grab some basic Boots of Speed, and work towards your upgraded boots of choice. This is most commonly Power Treads, which give you some much-needed health as well as attack speed, although beginners often fall back on Arcane Boots.
Finally, upgraded any Iron Branches you have into a Magic Wand, and if you can also upgrade your starting Mantle of Intelligence into a Null Talisman.
Core Options
Since Queen of Pain has a great in-built mobility skill in the form of Blink, she does not need a mobility item. This opens up a wide number of possibilities for your first luxury item. The most common options are:
Orchid Malevolence – Orchid is the riskier, more offensive item of the three. It’s risen to popularity over recent months, especially in professional. It gives you good intelligence gain, a nice boost to your mana regeneration, and a good chunk of damage and attack speed, allowing you to more quickly transition into a potential snowball semi-carry role. It also extremely easy to build into. Most importantly the active, Soul Burn, amplifies the damage you deal to an enemy by 30% for 5 seconds.
As QoP, like most mid gankers, is a hero who excels and quick ‘get-in, get-out’ pick off ganks, Orchid is a fantastic item on her, meaning your burst combo does more damage, killing off enemies that much faster.
The problem with Orchid vis-à-vis the other two options is that it gives you absolutely no health, so you really will feel extremely squishy heading into the post-laning phase. If you get caught, you’re likely going to die, and so Orchid bets all on your skill with the hero. It also relies on you having good mana management skills, as instead of a large chunk of flat mana like Bloodstone or Aghanims, it gives you direct intelligence, which improves your mana regeneration.
In short: there are a lot of reasons Orchid is heavily favoured over other options in the professional scene, but these rely mostly on you being skilled with the hero. Beginners and those who are not confident in their QoP play would be better served by one of the options listed below, but skilled players will get a lot more out of an Orchid pick-up.
Aghanim’s Scepter – The item that tends to be favoured most in public matchmaking. As well as giving a decent chunk of stats – 200 health, 150 mana, and +10 all stats – Aghanims drastically reduces the cooldown on QoP’s Sonic Wave ultimate from 135 seconds to 40 seconds and increases the damage from 290/390/490 to 325/450/575 pure damage.
Black King Bar – Not the ideal first core option, though always a great luxury item. Sometimes QoP players are forced into purchasing Black King Bar as their first item if they find they’re being shut down hard and stun locked.
BKB gives you some much-needed health, especially if you went the Orchid route and feel extremely fragile. Even more importantly Spell Immunity will allow you to play super aggressively, using the active to avoid being stun locked or burst down.
Luxury Items
All of the above – BKB, Aghanim’s, and Orchid Malevolence - also make for great luxury extensions. On top of them, the following are also common pick-ups on QoP:
Scythe of Vyse – Scythe is QoP’s ultimate late-game item. 3.5 seconds of solid disable, excellent stats and huge mana regeneration. There’s a reason in the competitive scene it is often rushed as soon as QoP gets just one core item; it’s that damn good. The problem is it’s also really damn expensive. Most of the time, therefore, it’s probably best made a second luxury item rather than your first luxury item.
Veil of Discord – Actually quite a rare pick-up on QoP. If you intend to focus on your early and mid game burst damage rather than transitioning into more of a right-clicker as your burst damage tapers off, then it’s a great way of maintaining the effectiveness of your abilities.
Veil gives decent all-round stats - +6 all stats, +6 health regeneration, +6 damage, and +6 armour, but the main reason it’s purchased is for its active, Magic Weakness. Magic Weakness increases the magic damage taken by an enemy caught within its 600 unit radius by 25%, which augments your abilities superbly. It lasts for a lengthy 25 seconds, making it a great active for teamfights, and won’t just buff your own magic damage output either - it will also increase the potency of any other magic damage spells your teammates cast on affected enemies in that time frame too
Shiva’s Guard – Shiva’s makes for a great late-late game item on QoP. By this stage you’re likely 5 slotted, and so it becomes a contender for your last item slot. The armour will go a good way to making you tankier, while the aura is great to have for your team. You also gain a nice chunk of intelligence (always helpful for QoP; both as a way to increase damage and maintain your mana pool). You can also use the Arctic Blast AoE nuke whilst Blinking into the fight, ensuring multiple enemies are hit by the magic damage and the slow.
Bloodstone – Bloodstone is the perfect item for a caster in need of tanking up. It gives a huge 500 health and 400 mana, as well as enormous health and mana regeneration. The Bloodpact passive will further increase your mana regeneration, as well as reduce the amount of gold lost upon dying and the respawn timer, and will heal allies in a 1675 radius when you die.
While it’ll tank you up and end all of your regen problems, it’s perhaps a bit too passive for such an aggressive hero.
Eye of Skadi – Great stats and a decent attack modifier. Eye of Skadi allows you to begin transitioning into that semi-carry DPS’er role.
Ethereal Blade – E-Blade is a great offensive and defensive item. Defensively it grants you 4 seconds of physical immunity, and allows you to give that effect either to an ally (ideally someone who’s the target of enemy right clicks), or an enemy hero (the enemy physical DPS’er). This gives you time to create distance between yourself and the enemy carry or at the very least buys your team 4 seconds of distraction time.
Offensively, when combined with burst magic damage E-Blade becomes a tool by which magic damage nukers can scale into the late game. After casting E-Blade on an enemy nuke them with as much burst damage output as possible; E-Blade will buff that damage by a huge 40%.
Situational Items
Boots of Travel – The best super late game boots. It combines your TP Scroll slot with your boot slot, freeing up room in your inventory for an extra item when you’re starting to get maxed out. Also always reassuring to have in the late-late game when an enemy team can quickly break the base – if they catch you by surprise in a base rush you will always be able to TP back.
Linken’s Sphere – Linkens can be a decent luxury item on QoP. The stats it provides are decent but expensive for its price; you’re really getting it for the passive Spellblock. If the enemy team has a lot of single-target disables, or that one key ability which is really frustrating your ability to do your job in teamfights, then it’s worth considering. The Spellblock ability can also be transferred to an ally if need be, giving you a way of protecting your team’s carry if they’re the focus of stuns as well.
Dagon – Gives you even more burst damage – 400 to 800. Dagon is a good snowball item, but a terrible item to get if you’re not snowballing because it will gradually taper off if effectiveness over time. Dagon 5 is also the least cost efficient item in the game at 7720 gold for an 800 magic damage nuke, although if you’ve built an Ethereal Blade it’s more effective. Highly situational (and risky!).
Monkey King Bar – MKB, and the next two items in this list – Desolator and Mjollnir – are very much situational – the situation being the late game when you need to start building right-click damage items (i.e. transitioning from a ganker and nuker into a semi-carry DPS’er).
Desolator – Desolator is fairly cheap compared to other right-click damage items and if none of the other cores on your team have bought one then it’s the perfect pick-up for a transitioning QoP – you provide offensive utility for your team and get a decent chunk of damage. The minus armour also makes you a potent pusher since it works on buildings too.
Mjollnir – The other damage item to consider. Mjollnir gives you the attack speed you otherwise lack to be a fearsome right clicker in teamfights. Mjollnir is an especially good option if you’re facing a push-heavy line-up, or an illusion-based carry (such as Phantom Lancer or Terrorblade).
Skill Build
Shadow Strike is usually skilled second but is maxed last most of the time. It is a magic damage over time nuke that also slows the target hero for 15 seconds. The damage dealt is fairly low initially, dealing minor burst damage of 50/75/100/125, but over time it is capable of dealing a total of 200/275/350/425 damage.
As QoP excels more in dealing burst damage than damage over time, Shadow Strike is maxed last, but it is an amazing early harassment tool so it is often skilled once or even twice early on, especially against melee lane opponents, and thrown out to annoy the opponent and punish them for approaching the creep wave.
Blink tends to be skilled first and maxed second. The reason it tends to be skilled first is to ensure your safety in the mid lane from level 1 ganks – if you take Blink there is virtually no chance of you dying to a level 1 gank.
Extra levels reduces the cooldown, from a fairly lengthy 15 seconds at level 1 to 6 seconds at level 4, which will often allow you to Blink in aggressively, dump your spells, and then Blink to safety (or aggressively to chase) if necessary.
Scream of Pain is a burst magic damage AoE nuke and is maxed first. It deals 85/165/225/300 magic damage in a 475 unit radius around Queen of Pain. This is QoP’s bread and butter damage dealing ability. It is great for ganking, for clearing creep waves, and for dealing significant burst damage to multiple heroes in teamfights. For all of those reasons it is always maxed first.
Finally, Queen of Pain’s ultimate, Sonic Wave, is always skilled (levels 6, 11 and 16). It is similar to Scream of Pain in that it is an AoE nuke. The two key differences are: 1) The AoE it covers expands in a wave out from QoP. It travels a total of 800 units and has a final radius of 450 units, making it more difficult to use than Scream of Pain but also covering more ground. And 2) As of patch 6.83 It deals pure damage, not magic damage, and so pierces spell immunity.
Additional levels increase the damage (290/390/490) and increase the mana cost (from 250 to 500). It is sometimes skipped at level 6 because of this huge mana cost, and because the damage is barely better than an additional Scream of Pain. In general I wouldn’t recommend this; it’s always good to have another nuke at your disposal should you need it rather than relying entirely on the engagement lasting long enough for Scream of Pain to come off cooldown.
Gameplay Tips
Shadow Strike is great for providing early harassment, as it lasts such a long time (15 seconds), slows the target, and deals a deceptively large amount of damage over time (200/275/350/425 magic damage). Use this to your advantage at the start to force the enemy opponent away from the creep wave; if they come in to last hit cast it on them and then follow up with right clicks to punish their gimped move speed.
If up against a melee lane opponent who is susceptible to early harassment consider a second point in Shadow Strike early on.
Shadow Strike also amplifies your ganking potential. Although the burst damage it deals is fairly minimal, the slow is fantastic, and lasts a lengthy 15 seconds, making it a great chasing tool. If the enemy (or enemies) you’re ganking tries to flee cast it on them to slow them down.
Blink has a really lengthy cooldown initially, so do not use it to Blink in aggressively unless you’re certain that the enemy will be forced to retreat – if they decide to stand their ground and have the ability to take you down then you’ll have no means of escape.
Blink is great for dodging projectile abilities, including stuns. Remember that it has a somewhat lengthy cast delay of 0.33 seconds for a Blink, so use it as soon as you see the ability in question cast against you.
If being chased a good tactic is to either Blink into inaccessible areas and wait for it to come off cooldown again before continuing on or to actually Blink behind the enemies pursuing you – they will typically assume you Blinked ahead and continue on in that direction, allowing for an easy escape.
Scream of Pain on the other hand has an instant cast time, so you can use it without any delay.
| Tip: Scream of Pain not only hits invisible enemies, it actually indicates where they are when it impacts them. |
Generally you should save Sonic Wave either for when you can guarantee it will finish off an enemy or for hitting multiple enemies in teamfights or skirmishes; your goal should always be to hit more than 1 person unless using it to secure a kill during a gank.
Remember that as of patch 6.83 Sonic Wave deals pure damage, not magic damage, and so it will damage enemies through Black King Bar's spell immunity.
Last Updated - Patch 6.83.
