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The ultimate anti-carry and one of the best support heroes in patch 7.34b, Vengeful Spirit. Find out why and play her to win lots of MMR.
Guess who’s back with vengeance as one of the most powerful supports of patch 7.34b? It’s Vengeful Spirit! The chicken lady who used to be one of the weakest supports is seeing a return into the spotlight after going ignored for the longest time. With her overall win rate jumping by a whopping six percent since pre 7.34, one can only wonder what changed. Allow us to explain why you should not sleep on support Vengeful Spirit in patch 7.34b.
Why support Vengeful Spirit is appealing in 7.34b
As you can see from theDotabuffchart above, Vengeful Spirit had a sharp increase on her win and pick rate sincepatch 7.34dropped. Between July to August 24, her pick rate rose from around five percent to 10 percent. Meanwhile, her win rate jumped to 53 percent from 47 percent. Sure, those numbers were based on Vengeful Spirit as a whole, and not a support specifically. However, this did not discount the fact that there was something going on with this hero. So what exactly happened?
Massive buff to Wave of Terror
In patch 7.34, Vengeful Spirit received a major upgrade to her skill, Wave of Terror. It now reduces enemy’s total attack damage by up to 30 percent. Not base attack, butTOTAL. Take Legion Commander who has a total of 300 attack from items and duel victories for example. One wave of terror and all of a sudden her damage drops to 210. This makes support Vengeful Spirit an incredible anti-carry hero.
She still retains her armor reduction debuff which goes up to negative 10 with her level 15 talent. Furthermore, all effects last for eight seconds. That’s a long time! Of course, you can counter this by buying Black King Bar. Nonetheless, carries will have a hell of a time especially during laning stage. By the way, in7.34b, her Magic Missile had an increase in stun duration from 1.4 to 1.7 seconds.
What items to get as support Vengeful Spirit
Solar Crestis an increasingly popular item for supports in 7.34b and is the perfect item for Vengeful Spirit. As a universal hero, Vengeful Spirit craves Solar Crest because the item now provides stats by requiring a Crown in the recipe. The item’s active ability, Shine, provides excellent enhancement to allies or debilitation to enemies.
Casting to allies:
Casting to enemies:
Apart from Solar Crest,Aghanim’s Shardis another important item to acquire the double Magic Missile stuns. If lucky, you can get it from the Tormentor instead of purchasing it to save your gold for other items. Other than that,Boots of BearingandAghanim’s Scepterare two big items that most support Vengeful Spirit should go for.
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How does support Vengeful Spirit fare in the 7.34b pro scene?
According to reports fromSpectral, Vengeful Spirit is the third most picked hero in The International 2023 (TI12) Regional Qualifiers thus far. The unimpressive 47.22% win rate includes matches of all positions or roles. However, when broken down to each specific role, the numbers are as follows:
It is evident that Vengeful Spirit performs best as a safelane support. Of the Regional Qualifiers that have concluded (North America and China), Nouns Esports and Xtreme Gaming were the teams that utilized safalene support Vengeful Spirit the most. The two teams drafted the hero four times and won three of them.
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Other sleeper supports in 7.34b
There are a number of support heroes other than Vengeful Spirit that are seeing an increase in performance in 7.34b. Grimstroke, Earthshaker and Clockwerk are some of the most successful support heroes at the TI12 Regional Qualifiers. Dawnbreaker and Treant are also returning to their prime as support heroes as well.
We will update you with more hero highlights as they come so be sure to stay tuned toesports.gg for moreDota 2 newsand updates.
