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.
Our complete character profile for Sven can be found here.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Fantastic stun
- Good passive cleave farming and pushing ability
- Great armour and movespeed aura ability
- Huge physical DPS
Cons
- Susceptible to being kited
- 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 focus on playing Sven as a carry hero.
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.
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.
Core Items
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.
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.
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.
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.
