Introduction
“My gaze never falters.”
Visage is a ranged intelligence support who particularly excels in trilanes and large teamfights, where his nuke becomes incredibly potent. He is also an unusually tanky support thanks to his passive and has access to strong summons when he hits level 6.
You can find Visage's complete character profile here.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Great lane support
- High burst magic damage
- Has a slow and two separate stuns
- Can split push effectively with Familiars
- Scales quite well for a support
- Also farms well for a support
Cons
- Involves a lot of micro-management during teamfights
- If you can’t micro effectively then he will lack lockdown in fights
- Familiars have a high gold and experience bounty if killed
- Lacks lockdown outside of Familiar stun
- Mana problems
Item Build
Visage is typically played as a 4 position support and that is the play style that this build guide is geared towards. Visage is a support who actually has quite good farming potential, as he can farm remotely and split-push using his Familiars. In competitive Dota, for example, from the mid-game onwards Visage will often start transitioning into a semi-core, and will usually rush Aghanims into Assault Cuirass.
Starting Items
A typical starting item set-up for Visage will look like this:
- Courier and/or Observer Wards, Tangos, Healing Salve, 3x Iron Branch, Clarity.
This gives you good regen, which you’ll be able to pool to your carry if necessary, or burn through yourself if you need to harass the enemy offlaner. The Iron Branches give you a nice chunk of starting stats and both will prove useful later on.
Early Game
Upgrade the Courier into a Flying Courier at the 3 minute mark, and continue to buy Observer Wards whenever they come off cooldown.
In the early game you will definitely need: some basic Boots of Speed and a Magic Stick (which you can upgrade into a Magic Wand along with the Iron Branches you started out with).
You should also consider a Medallion of Courage at this stage - a really good cost-effective early game support item. The mana regeneration will help a lot and the minus armour is seriously under-estimated in public games. It also opens up the possibility for an early Roshan for your team.
Core Items
As far as upgraded boots go, Visage has a couple of options. Power Treads will give you so much-needed health and are great for a Visage that will eventually transition into more of a core role. My preferred option, however, is Arcane Boots. Arcane Boots are highly recommend if you build your team’s Mekanism so you have the mana to cast it as well as you other abilities liberally. Soul Assumption, in particular, is a very mana intensive ability with a low cooldown, so having mana boots will allow you to spam it effectively in teamfights.
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. Be sure to check with your team to see if anyone else intends to build one before you get started on it though.
Luxury Items
Aghanim’s Scepter – +200 health, +100 mana, and +10 all stats are all fantastic to have on a support hero that needs all the stats he can get, but the buff to his ultimate is what makes Aghanim’s Scepter such a great luxury item for Visage, as it allows you to summon 3 Familiars, which will greatly increases your DPS, split-pushing potential, and teamfight lockdown potential.
Assault Cuirass – Visage is one of the few, perhaps the only, support that will be capable of purchasing an Assault Cuirass in a timely manner. By using your Familiars to split-push you can farm at a surprisingly fast rate with Visage. Assault Cuirass’s team utility (armor and attack speed auras) makes it a perfect luxury support item, the only problem is that for most supports it’s simply far too expensive to ever be considered. If you do manage to farm well, then Assault Cuirass is best purchased straight after Aghanim’s Scepter – this is the cookie cutter build for Visage in competitive play.
Rod of Atos – Huge chunks of health and mana, and an active that slows an enemy by 60% for 4 seconds (especially useful if your team is ahead but the other team is attempting to avoid direct engagements). I'm actually a fan of Atos and its pseudo-disable, but most people are not. If you like it, you can get it on Visage as a luxury pick-up.
Drums of Endurance – A solid pick-up because they give your team bonus attack speed and move speed auras, whilst at the same time giving you plenty of stats and being easy to build into (since the components are so cheap you can buy them up whenever you have the spare unreliable gold, meaning you won’t lose much gold when you die).
Quick rule of thumb – purchase Drums as a luxury item on Visage if no one else on your team has them yet, as their team utility alone will make them a good choice.
Scythe of Vyse – A fantastic luxury item for any intelligence hero. Good stats, fantastic mana regeneration, and 3.5 seconds of enemy disable. The prohibitive cost makes it more of a third luxury item at best, though.
Shiva’s Guard – A great late-late game item. By this stage you’re likely 5 slotted, and so it becomes a contender for your last couple of item slots. The armour will go a good way to making you even tankier, while the aura is great to have for your team. You also gain a nice chunk of intelligence (always helpful for Visage; both as a way to increase damage and maintain your mana pool). You can also use the Arctic Blast AoE nuke to damage and slow enemies in teamfights.
Heaven’s Halberd – A fantastic anti-carry item, thanks to the ability to disarm an enemy core for 3.0-4.5 seconds, Halberd will also give you a much-welcome chunk of health and evasion, making you a fair bit tankier.
Force Staff – You can never go wrong with Force Staff on a support hero (make sure you actually use the active!). It will help to mitigate your own lack of mobility and/or positional skill. It's also great for clutch escapes or chases and also gives you even more utility for your teammates (you can use Force on allied heroes, yourself, and enemies).
Situational Items
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 – Smoke of Deceit is a great way to gank without being spotted by enemy Observer Wards, so you may wish to purchase Smoke at the start if you intend to gank early on, especially if you want to gank the mid lane.
Boots of Travel – When you are at that stage of the game when you’re becoming 6 slotted, 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.
Vladmir’s Offering – Yes, you’re ranged, so you won’t get the lifesteal bonus from Vlad’s, but you’re not buying it for yourself, you’re buying it for your team. Vladmir’s Offering is great to pick up on a support even if your team doesn’t consist of any melee heroes because of the bonus damage and armour it provides. If your team does have a melee core and no one else has purchased one then it’s an excellent utility item to purchase.
Pipe of Insight – Not an ideal pick-up if you bought the team’s Mekanism (having both on one hero is very risky, especially a support), but always a good item to have if the enemy team has any magic damage (which they almost certainly will). Quick rule of thumb: go for it if you didn’t buy the Mekanism earlier.
Ghost Scepter – The go-to luxury pick-up if you find the enemy team is able to bring you down quickly with physical damage (typically in the form of right-clicks). Most often this will be the enemy carry taking you out of the fight quickly with a few auto-attacks. Ghost Scepter will buy you a clutch 4 seconds of physical immunity, which 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.
Necronomicon - Great way of augmenting your pushing potential and a good way to finally break the base if your team is struggling to do so. Also a great item for teamfights and for countering any invis enemy heroes and gives you some good stat gain too.
Skill Build
Grave Chill is an offensive slow ability. It is often skilled first but is maxed either second or last depending on personal preference. Grave Chill slows the move speed of an enemy unit by 32% and drains 64 of their attack speed, and gains these for himself, for a total of 3/4/5/6 seconds.
Soul Assumption is a magic damage nuke. It is usually skilled second but is always maxed first. Soul Assumption deals a base damage of 20, but is ‘topped up’ by 65 depending on the number of charges Visage has stacked up (up to a total of 3/4/5/6). A single Soul is acquired each time heroes close to Visage take 110 damage from player sources or Roshan and will be accessible for a total of 6 seconds.
In short, Soul Assumption can deal a total of 215/280/345/410 magic damage, making it a potent magic damage nuke, and as it has a low cooldown of just 4 seconds it allows Visage to dish out incredibly high magic damage during teamfights.
Gravekeeper’s Cloak is a passive defensive ability. It is usually skilled last and either maxed second or last depending on personal preference. Gravekeeper’s Cloak gives Visage 1/2/4/5 bonus armour and 3/6/12/16% bonus magic resistance for each ‘layer’ he has to his Cloak.
Visage can have a maximum of 4 layers, making for a total of 4/8/16/20 bonus armor and 12/24/48/64% bonus magic resistance. However, each time he takes damage from an enemy hero he loses a layer of his cloak, and these are regeneration at a rate of one layer per 6 seconds.
Summon Familiars is Visage’s ultimate and it is always skilled (levels 6, 11 and 16). It allows Visage to summon two bird-like Familiars, which are flying spell immune units that deal high physical damage at short range. Additional levels increase their health, armor, move speed, and damage.
Familiars also have access to their own Stone Form ability. Bound to the Q key, Stone Form makes the Familiars drop to the ground after a 1 second delay, stunning any enemy units caught in a 325 unit AoE for 1/1.25/1.5 seconds and dealing 60/100/140 damage each. They then go into ‘Stone Form’, which makes them completely immune to all attacks for 8 seconds. After this they move back into the air, having been completely regenerated.
Gameplay Tips
Grave Chill has two primary uses. Firstly, as a chasing ability, since it slows the enemy by a hefty 32% for a lengthy 3/4/5/6 second. Secondly, it can also come in handy when attempting to escape. Not only does it slow your pursuer, it also grants you bonus move speed for the same length of time, which can often allow you to put enough distance between you and your enemies to get to safety.
| Note: Although Grave Chill’s skill description states that Visage gains the drained move and attack speed for himself, the speeds gained are actually independent of the amount that was reduced on the target. |
Grave Chill’s most obvious use is as a move speed slow, but don’t forget that it also slows an enemy’s attack speed. -64 attack speed is quite a substantial amount, and using this on enemy cores can seriously hamper their damage output in teamfights.
Soul Assumption’s damage output is based almost entirely on how many Souls you have stacked up. You can tell this by glancing at the bars above Visage – these bars light up to indicate how many Souls he has. Try not to cast it until you have a few Souls, otherwise the damage dealt will be minor.
Soul Assumption’s cooldown is very low at 4 seconds, which allows you to have a huge impact in early and mid game teamfights. When your Soul counter is maxed out cast Soul Assumption on an enemy, then wait for the counter to fill up again, rinse and repeat.
| Important: The damage from Soul Assumption is calculated when it hits, NOT when it is launched. Given that you lose each Soul after just 6 seconds this makes timely use of your ability paramount; leave it too long and even though the count above Visage’s head shows plenty of Souls the actually damage you output may be significantly lower than expected because of this rule. |
The Soul acquisition radius is a large 1375 units, so you don’t need to be in the middle of the battle in order to stack up Souls. If you’re getting low on health you can stand at the edges of a fight in order to get some Souls before using Soul Assumption again.
| Note: The damage from Soul Assumption itself, the damage from all creeps (except Roshan), and self-inflicted damage does not count for Soul Assumption purposes. |
Gravekeeper’s Cloak is a somewhat misleading ability – ahead of a battle your armor stats will suggest you’re an extremely tanky hero, but you need to keep in mind that sustained attacks will quickly rip through your layers of cloak, making you much weaker. In short, don’t over-estimate your tankiness based on armor granted by this ability.
Summon Familiars has a lengthy 180/160/140 second cooldown, so you want to activate your Familiars as soon as you hit level 6 so that the cooldown is (hopefully) over by the time they die. This isn’t the only reason you want to avoid getting them killed off wherever possible – they also grant enemy heroes a hefty 100 gold and 4 1 experience bounty per Familiar they kill.
Because of their high bounty, it is usually worth re-summoning your Familiars if they’re in a situation where they’re likely to be killed by heroes. This can happen quite frequently if you use Stone Form when they’re in enemy territory. If you wait for Stone Form to end before re-summoning you not only deny those enemy heroes a gold and experience bounty, you also cause them to waste time waiting for Stone Form to end.
Familiars deal high damage, but this drains away as they attack. Each Familiar starts with 7 charges of bonus damage and each charge gives 8/14/22 bonus damage. Familiars lose one charge each time they attack, and gain one charge every 15 seconds. You thus want to hold off on using them to attack if you expect a teamfight in the near future, as you will want their high damage output for the fight. However, if you don’t anticipate such a fight, you can use them to quickly push out a creep wave or take out jungle camps.
You can refresh your Familiars’ damage either by not attacking with them, by using Stone Form, or by re-summoning them. A common tactic is to send them off on their own to split-push a lane, use Stone Form in the lane when their damage dwindles to virtually nothing, and then use them to continue pushing once they come out of Stone Form. If a teamfight breaks out you can still make use of them by re-summoning them and placing the ability back on cooldown.
If you’re not confident in your micro abilities you can think of Familiars as a simple extension of Visage and bind them all to one group. More experienced players, however, will have separate hotkeys for the Familiars and will be able to micro them in teamfights so as to not only deal good burst damage but also to stun enemy heroes.
It’s actually possible to get off four Familiar stuns (6 if you have Aghanim’s Scepter) in a teamfight. Use your Familiars to stun by activating Stone Form, and then immediately re-cast Summon Familiar to gain access to two brand new Familiars with Stone Form.
Last Updated - Patch 6.83.
