Introduction
“You can't run from heaven!”
Zeus is a nuker. Each of his abilities allows him to deal incredible amounts of burst magic damage, making him a popular pub stomp hero who can quickly burst kill most enemies. Because of this one dimensional nature of the hero, however, he is very rarely picked in competitive Dota.
You can find our complete character profile for Zeus here.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Great burst magic damage
- Good hero killer
- Global nuke
- Amazing against squishy line-ups
- Somewhat item independent
- Very strong in the early and mid game
- Low cooldown on most abilities
- Has a mini-stun
- Has brief True Sight vision
Cons
- Terrible attack animation
- Somewhat squishy
- Slow movespeed and no mobility skill
- Positioning is very important
- No hard lockdown
- Struggles against tanky line-ups
- Trails off in the ultra late game
- Needs levels
- Mana issues
Item Build
Zeus is typically played in the mid lane, although not exclusively so. In public matchmaking you may be forced to lane with him, which isn’t as terrible as it may seem. What he really needs are levels, more so than items, and so as long as you’re able to get decent experience you shouldn’t fare too badly in the lane. It’s less than ideal but it’s doable.
That said, ideally you want to be in the mid lane. Your goal is to get a Bottle up and running as quickly as possible so that you can sustain your mana pool and work through any harass you may receive in the early stages.
Starting Items
A safe starting build would be something like this:
-A set of Tangos, a Healing Salve, 3x Iron Branches, and some Clarities.
This gives you plenty of regen (both health and mana, so that you can use Arc Lightning to help secure last hits) and some stat gain.
Or if you want, you can go for a riskier, all-in Bottle rush starting build:
- A set of Tangos, 3x Iron Branches.
This gives you less regen (no mana regen whatsoever), but gives you a head start towards getting that much-needed early Bottle.
Core Items
Your first core item then is a Bottle. Aim to get it before the 2 minute rune spawns and push your wave out a bit ahead of time. This is fairly easy to do with Zeus as you will often be using Arc Lightning to last hit because your attack animation is so awful, which will naturally push the wave out. If the first rune is a haste consider rotating into the nearby lane to grab an early kill (only do so if the creep wave is in an advantageous position and your teammate(s) will be able to join in the fight, otherwise go back to mid and farm up.
Your next two priorities are to finish off your Magic Wand, upgrading any Iron Branches you have in your inventory in the process, and grab a pair of Boots of Speed. As a fairly squishy and highly immobile hero you could really do with getting quick Boots of Speed so as to increase your survivability in the lane.
Keep looking out for runes (remember they spawn every even minute at one of the two locations), and for opportunities to gunk with them. In general haste and regeneration runes are best for Zeus. The former for quick rotations and the latter so you can spam your abilities more freely. Double damage and illusion runes don’t really do much for Zeus (besides re-fill your Bottle).
Try to always have a TP Scroll on hand, so that you can rotate to your other lanes if they get tower dove, and keep a look-out for opportunities to use your ultimate to secure a kill on any fleeing enemy heroes that are low on life. Avoid kill stealing! It’ll just piss your teammates off. Instead, use your ultimate to secure kills on enemies that have escaped your allies, or during teamfights to soften the enemy up).
For upgraded Boots you want to purchase Arcane Boots from the secret shop. Good move speed, a nice boost to your mana pool, and 100 extra mana every 55 seconds makes them a no brainer on Zeus.
Luxury Items
Now you have your core and you can consider your options. The items below are what I personally like building, and are by far the most popular options in public matchmaking. However, they are frowned upon by some Dota players as it is not a build that is used in competitive Dota because it’s quite greedy and not very team-oriented.
Veil of Discord – 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.
Aghanim’s Scepter – Scepter gives much better stat gain than Veil (+10 to all stats, +200 health, and +150 mana), but where Veil primarily augments your Arc Lightning and Lightning Bolt abilities, Scepter buffs your ultimate, Thundergod’s Wrath. With Scepter, Wrath’s damage is increased from 225/350/475 to 440/540/640 respectively; a great damage buff for a global ability which hits all 5 enemy heroes.
Refresher Orb – By this stage you should have enough mana to support the active on Refresher, and that is the main reason this item is so attractive for Zeus. Most of its stats, aside from the 200% mana regeneration buff, are inconsequential, but the active will allow you to reset the cooldowns on all of your abilities, massively increasing your damage combo. Once you have a Refresher you can perform numerous different combos with your abilities. A good example is: Lightning Bolt > Arc Lightning > Thundergod’s Wrath > Lightning Bolt > Refresher > Lightning Bolt > Thundergod’s Wrath, with Arc Lightning being thrown out whenever your other abilities are on cooldown. Not many heroes will survive such a combo if they’re the focus of all your abilities, and if performed in a teamfight it will significantly soften up the entire enemy team for your carry to mop up.
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.
Sometimes, if a Zeus has a very strong early game, it is tempting to rush Bloodstone. With it you’ll be surprisingly tanky for what is typically considered a squishy hero and will need never worry about running out of mana during teamfights, allowing you to spam your abilities freely.
Situational Items
Force Staff – Force Staff is generally considered a core item on Zeus in competitive Dota, where positioning and mobility is all the more important. It’s a less common pick up in public matchmaking, but still an excellent luxury or situational pick up. For a hero like Zeus that has slow move speed and lacks any form of mobility skill Force Staff is fantastic.
It’s an amazing escape tool for someone who is naturally quite squishy and slow, and can be used on allies and enemies, making it a great play-making item for clutch saves or to Force an enemy into bad positioning.
Eul’s Scepter of Divinity – The active is good for taking an enemy carry out of the fight for a couple of seconds. In that respect it’s sometimes referred to as a poor man’s Scythe of Vyse, the downside being that the hero selected cannot be attacked. Nonetheless, it’s useful for buying your team time. The other downside is that whilst a Scythe use is universally beneficial, Eul’s can sometimes be disadvantageous to your team, perhaps saving an enemy when they would otherwise have died, or trapping an allied hero who would otherwise have escaped. If you’re not confident in your decision making abilities in the heat of battle then don’t go for Eul’s.
The other upsides of Eul’s are the fantastic mana regeneration and the burst +40 move speed, which really helps out Zeus who has naturally poor move speed and tends to eat into his mana pool very quickly.
Scythe of Vyse - The ultimate late-game/luxury item for most intelligence heroes. You'll need never worry about the mana cost of spells again, acquire a decent stat boost, and have access to a 3.5 second lockdown.
Ghost Scepter - If you find that you're easy pickings for the enemy DPS'ers and at risk of feeding more than helping your team as the game progresses then get a Ghost Scepter. It will give you 4 seconds of physical invulnerability, which will feel like an age to the enemy carry who should probably be hitting higher priority targets instead.
Heaven's Halberd - A good anti-carry item thanks to giving you 3.0-4.5 seconds of disarm, and it will also give you a nice health boost and general survivability. I would consider it as a 5th or 6th item on Zeus if your team is really struggling to deal with an enemy DPS’er.
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.
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 if you’re about to become 6 slotted. This is a viable option because by this stage you should no longer need the mana from Arcane Boots anyway, and you may well need to TP back to defend the base in an emergency.
Skill Build
Arc Lightning is skilled first, but maxed last. Zeus has an absolutely terrible attack animation and low base damage, which makes last-hitting incredibly difficult, especially if your lane opponent is good at denying creeps. As a result, Arc Lightning is used to secure last hits in the early laning phase.
As noted earlier in the guide, this will push your lane out, because the lightning will jump to nearby creeps (and the enemy hero, if they’re within range). Use this to your advantage to push the wave out ahead of each rune spawn. This will allow you to secure the rune, or if the enemy decides to contest the rune, forces them to miss out on precious gold and experience.
Lightning Bolt is skilled last because the mana cost means you can’t spam it early on, but maxed first because it is your most potent nuke. Bolt is a superb nuke, dealing 350 magic damage at level 4 (before factoring in bonus damage from your passive). Note also that it both mini-stuns the target (which is useful for cancelling channelled abilities or TP Scrolls) and provides True Sight in a 750 unit range.
Static Field is usually skilled at level 2, to make your Arc Lightning last hits more effective at harassing the enemy, and is maxed second, after Lightning Bolt. Static Field is a passive ability that deals a percentage of the enemy’s current health to any unit within a 1200 unit range of Zeus.
| Note: The cast range on Arc Lightning is 850, and Lightning Bolt is 700, so Static Field will always affect any enemies you target with your first two abilities, as well as any enemies that are within 1200 units of you when you cast them. Better yet, Static Field’s damage is dealt before that of your other abilities, making it even more effective. |
Static Field is often under-estimated, but it is the ability which allows Zeus to scale reasonably well into the mid and late game, and which means he deals quite considerable AoE damage during teamfights. To give you a rough example, if you are ganking a side lane and the enemy heroes there have 1500 health and 1000 health remaining respectively, you will deal 165 and 110 damage respectively, and before the damage from those abilities is applied. During teamfights this means you could quite reasonably be dealing 500 to well in excess of 1000 magic damage just by using Arc Lightning once.
Thundergod’s Wrath is always skilled (levels 6, 11 and 16). This deals 225/350/475 magic damage to every enemy hero who is alive, except for those who are invisible. This means that as soon as Zeus is level 6 he can deal a total of 1125 magic damage to the enemy team.
Thundergod’s Wrath has three key uses. First, as a teamfight/ganking nuke. Cast at the start of a teamfight or gank it serves to soften up the enemy team, making enemy heroes easier to pick off. Its second use is to kill secure (and sometimes kill steal). The goal is to use it when an enemy is escaping on low life and, crucially, it is probable that your team will not finish them off and they will escape alive. Its third use is emergency scouting. If your team desperately needs to know the enemy position, or desperately needs True Sight, you can cast Thundergod’s Wrath to reveal the enemy position as well as grant True Sight of invisible heroes.
Gameplay Tips
As mentioned above, you can use Arc Lightning to secure last hits and push the wave thanks to its incredibly low cooldown and the fact that it will bounce throughout the creep wave.
Lightning Bolt actually mini-stuns, so you can use it to cancel channelled abilities, such as Enigma’s Black Hole or Witch Doctor’s Death Ward. Similarly, it can be used to cancel TP Scrolls.
Both Lightning Bolt and your ultimate, Thundergod’s Wrath, provide a 750 and 900 radius True Sight respectively at the location of the enemy they’re cast on. Although Thundergod’s Wrath will not deal damage to invisible heroes it will still reveal them.
A good tip if you suspect an enemy invisible hero is nearby is to use Lightning Bolt on a creep or on the ground, as this will trigger the 750 radius True Sight effect.
| Note: As of patch 6.81B you can target Lightning Bolt directly on the ground. This triggers the True Sight affect, making it a good tool for dewarding or spotting invis heroes, and also affects the closest enemy hero in a 325 range. |
Because those two abilities provide vision, but Arc Lightning does not, and because Arcane Lightning has a longer range than Lightning Bolt, use Lightning Bolt first if the enemy you’re targeting is retreating or attempting to juke, so that you can maintain vision long enough to get off your Arc Lightning.
Static Field works on all units within 1200 units range of Zeus whenever he casts an ability, even if they’re invisible. Note that the damage it deals is based on the enemy unit’s current health, not their maximum health pool, so it is best to use your abilities as soon as possible in a teamfight, so that Static Field deals the maximum damage.
All of Zeus’s abilities are countered by Spell Immunity. If an enemy hero is spell immune you’ll need to kite them for the duration of their spell immunity before you can deal damage to them.
Positioning is especially important for Zeus, because he is a squishy hero that lacks a mobility skill. Fortunately his skillset and terrible attack animation means you don’t actually need to get within attack range. The shortest range on your abilities is the 700 range of Lightning Bolt; use the superior range on your abilities to gain superior positioning in teamfights and stay out of harm’s way.
Last Updated - Patch 6.82.
