Abaddon, the Lord of Avernus, is one of my favorite Dota 2 characters. I have been playing him since Dota was a Warcraft 3 map and I have tried different builds over the years. A few years ago I found it funny that they called me out when I used him as an offlaner. I was told that Abaddon was used mostly as support on Dota 2, and I disagreed with this. Abaddon as a support becomes obsolete eventually, while as this build, which was more and more accepted later on, rarely does.
Many people turn Abaddon into a tank that simply won’t die and just takes damage, but if you’re just a punching bag any enemy team worth its salt will know better than to attack you first. Abaddon as a support is decent, but not particularly useful, especially since even if you go full carry you can still cast mist coils and aphotic shields nonstop to heal your allies. So, without delay, gentlemen and gentle women: I present you the ultimate offlaner Abaddon!
Abaddon’s Disadvantages
Lord of Avernus has two major disadvantages:
Damage. You can try to be one of the hard carries, but you’re never going to deal as much damage as the Dota 2 biggest damage-dealers. You cannot compete against them in damage, but you can use their damage against them and outsmart them with your own ultimate and regular hp regeneration. If all else fails, you WILL be able to escape.
Stuns. You’re also very vulnerable to stuns, disables and slowdowns. Particularly to sniper’s mini-stuns. My solution against this is to do these two things:
1- Keep your team alive so that you won’t get surrounded by disablers.
2- Don’t get caught in a situation which may cause your death. Even if you have to use your ult way too early to disable an initiating stun, this may save you if more disablers are coming for you.
3- Buy Black King Bar, although I don’t recommend this unless you’re fighting a lot of AoE disable enemies.
Stunning others. Abaddon is also not a particularly good stunner. If your opponent is out of your reach, he might just escape if he survives your mist coils. Don’t pursue your enemy into an ambush unless you are certain you can survive it.
Chasing. Abaddon is not particularly fast, and if curse of avernus is not active, you’ll have a hard time chasing down any average player. You need a bit of extra speed.
Abaddon does not do much damage and is vulnerable to disablers, but he is hard to kill and saves other characters… if he wants to.
Abaddon’s Advantages
Abaddon is hard to kill. He simply is. You have a shield that protects you from a decent amount of damage and returns it back to your enemies. This plus a decent speed and a nice amount of health makes it hard to simply kill you. Your enemy can’t trickle down your hp that much either. You can even harass your enemy with your first skill, which deals a decent amount of damage.
But it’s biggest advantage is this one: Abaddon saves. You can save yourself by using your shield at the right time, you can use your shield on your allies and you can sacrifice your own health to save them once again. And you can harass your enemies with regular strikes as much as you can, because you slow down your opponents and may cast silence with curse of Avernus. Even if in the end you don’t save your ally, perhaps that will get you a kill for a kill.
Ready to start a great game?
Not Your Merry Pure-hearted Healer
The Lord of Avernus can save. Should he? Yes, definitely. All the time? No. If your ally is useful, keep his hp up. If your ally is not particularly useful, use him as bait. When your enemy comes for him you can then heal him. Once your enemies realize it’s a trap, it will be too late. You have a shield and a heal that can kill as much as it can save. Your ally WILL live, your enemy might not. My allies often escape with that one sliver of health that’s just enough. My enemies do not escape at all. Don’t sacrifice your allies, though. Every lost ally is a giant failure for a character such as abaddon.
It’s not easy to know which combination to pick. Always check out the enemy team and adapt accordingly
Items To Obtain, in Order
Bold items are items you need to obtain. Bold and underlined items are final items.
1- Robe of the Magi: with this item you’ll earn the hatred of your allies because “Abaddon is a STR hero”. Yes indeed, but early on you can get an int bonus that grants you a slightly little bit extra of MP regeneration and more mana. This will be transformed early on into STR power threads, so it’s not a big deal. Morphling does it, why can’t you?
2- Boots of Speed: This extra running speed will be very valuable early on.
3- Gloves of Haste: with them, you can change your robe of the magi to STR power threads and get tons of bonuses. With this set complete, you should obtain number 4, your first final item.
4- Power threads: There are many other combinations that you can effectively use, but I prefer Power threads because they give you a bit of attack speed. And, for a character that gets faster with every curse of Avernus, this is great! This should be given to you automatically when you obtain items 1, 2 and 3. You can use these until late game.
5- Morbid Mask: Leeching a bit of hp will do you good, but that’s not the purpose of this mask, you will see.
6- Quarterstaff: You won’t ever get to use this item without completing the recipe.
7- Mask of Madness: Why would a tank character get this? Simple: because curse of avernus makes you faster, and while you are using your ultimate you will leech more hp and regain more hp (because more damage is being dealt to you). While using your ultimate with MoM you’re also leeching more hp, dealing more damage and silencing faster with your curse. Also, you can use this to move around the map faster and farm creeps at greater speed. Sometimes being a bit faster will allow you to escape or chase down any enemy. Your biggest fear are disables and stuns. Very late in-game you can switch this for Satanic, but you’ll still lose that valuable speed.
Done with these? How’s the game going so far? If you’re easily winning go for cranium basher and chase down your opponents. If you’re not, and you’re fighting lots of melee opponents, get blademail. But If spellcasters are doing most of the damage on you, get heart of tarrasque. It does not matter in which order you get the necessary items to build those. Get them as fast as you can. I will not include the recipes for these items, but you can see them by yourself.
8-Cranium Basher: You can use this item to utterly destroy your enemies and stunlock them forever. You don’t need to deal massive damage to be a threat and remember, the longer the fight gets, the better it is for you. You an upgrade it later on to abyssal blade and get a bit of extra range and more benefits to hp/mp regeneration and defense.
9-Blademail: whenever an agility hero gets too strong, Abaddon will be able to use this to deal massive damage to them, then finish them off with normal attacks and spells. If you time it well, you can extend the period of time in which your enemies will not attack you.
10- Heart of the tarrasque: a lot of HP and a lot of regeneration will make it very difficult for you to simply die, but also you will regenerate fast if you survive, being able to walk in and out of battle several times in a single clash.
11-Abyssal Blade: You have cranium basher, you may as well upgrade it for extra def and an extra stun you may use.
End game gear should be: Tarrasque, Power threads, Blade mail, abyssal blade and mask of madness. You can substitute Mask of Madness for Satanic if you’re tanky enough and your team can chase your enemies down, but that’s rare.
For the last item, what should we get? Up to you. Daedalus will give you that damage you’ve been missing for so long. Black King Bar will help if you have many disablers harassing you, Monkey King bar if you’re facing an oponent who can dodge your attacks, Assault Cuirass if you really feel like you could use a bit of aura+attackspeed+defense, or another tarasque, even just a free slot for roshan’s shield. I’d leave the shield for anyone else, though, unless you’re being the star of the show and totally shouldn’t die.
You should use items for making your strengths even deadlier or your weaknesses less of a hindrance depending on how the game is going for you.
Optional Creep Items
Trusty shovel: Not the best creep item to have and definitely not the worst, but an item you’d definitely want to keep around. Why? Because it’s wonderful: you can use this wonderful little shovel every 45 seconds to dig around and obtain either a free health/mana potion, 50 gold for your team or a creep to give you exp. It does not give you any other benefits, but that’s enough to keep it on your unused items inventory. You can switch this item with your main creep item every 45 seconds for some freebies even late game!
Philosopher’s stone: Why? doesn’t that seriously diminish your attack? Yes. You’re supposed to use this when you’re moving around the map and when you’re dead. That increased income can become very helpful when you need just a bit more gold to go for a buyback and defend your base against attackers to save the day. I’ve done that. So can you! This is also an item you should keep on your unused items inventory slots, useful for every hero.
Arcane ring: Not the best of items, but you can use this again and again to regain just enough mana for one spell early and mid-game. Use that spell wisely. I usually replace this as fast as possible.
Chipped vest: a good alternative to arcane ring. You can use its regen to ride fearless into battle, and deal some damage to your attackers as they attack you. You don’t especially need this, but it will be useful until you can get blademail.
Spider Legs: Being a fast horse will make it so that every character you tough will rarely escape you. Spider legs provides only a small boost on speed, but sometimes that’s just enough to obtain that kill, or to outrun your enemies thanks to your faster steed.
Abaddon should use his shield, ultimate and abilities efficiently to be a proper tank. Otherwise, he’ll die fairly quickly.
Blast Rig: While it disables some of your damage deflection capabilities, it’s still somewhat useful if you can stunlock a hero to death.
Bullwhip: An amazing item to have until late game, by far my favorite. You have that extra health regen and enough mana regen to spam your protective spells nonstop. You have extra speed by using the whip on yourself or your allies, making you feel like a real commander. Finally, you can also use the whip to slow down your opponents just long enough to be affected by the curse of Avernus. What’s not to love about such a wonderful item!
Spell Prism: Quickening charm but it gives you more stats. This is one of THE ultimate items you can get.
Mind Breaker: Abaddon’s third strike with curse of avernus deals silence. This silences your opponents on your first strike. That means your silence becomes extended and your skills to disable your opponents are greatly enhanced. Other than that, it’s not a particularly good item for late game unless you are a mage-hunter.
Elven Tunic: It makes you faster and gives you a bit of evasion. Not the best item, but when beggars can’t be chosers you really need that little bit of dodging to survive some fights, especially against hard carries who can do tons of damage in a single strike. Late game it may be slightly better than bullwhip.
Helm of the Undying: A character who cannot die using a helm that does not allow him to die. It’s overpowered, and it’s wonderful. You can use your ultimate early and then rely on helm of the undying and blademail to tank all of your opponents without dying. If you survive long enough you’ll be able to spam your ultimate twice in a teamfight.
Quickening Charm: Even if it’s just a single second, having your ultimate trigger a little bit earlier can make an enormous difference in Dota. Especially if you go in, take all the damage you can, restore some health and then go back into the frey to bait your enemies into attacking you to “finish you off”, triggering your ultimate again and healing you once more.
Quicksilver: It makes you fast and it makes you attack faster. For abaddon, both of these things are very useful.
Minotaur Horn: This item will make you a much tankier opponent while also giving you some attack. It’s not particularly clever to use this, but its results speak for themselves. If you add this to a good Tarrasque you will be a beast in combat.
I simulated a losing game with bots. I, always charged 1 vs 5 against the enemy team after they killed mine. Still gg ez!
Fighting
Ideally, a fight should go like this: You initiate, take some damage, or a lot of it and try to stun the character that can deal the most devastating strikes to your team. You can use blademail this early if you want, up to you. Your team then should appear and crush every single enemy while you stunlock that one powerful enemy character and survive with your ultimate, regaining hp. You should then either retreat and support your team with spells if your hp is too low or finish off those enemies who retreat. You can also stand your ground and keep healing and shielding your allies, and yourself. Remember curse of avernus is a very powerful tool to silence and pursue your enemies.
If the fight prolongs for too long, you can feign retreat like a true mongol rider and then go back into the frey when your ultimate is about to recharge. This will make your enemies attack you once again and they will fall for the bait, making it easier for your team to finish them off.
Now it’s not always up to your team, you still do decent damage and stunlock enemies to death. Almost any character should fear to 1 v 1 you, even Mortred, whom you can counter using blademail and your own ult.
What to do:
-Tank damage, survive it with your ult and counter it with your blademail whenever you must.
-Disable and stun on touch.
-Save your allies and yourself.
What to watch out for:
-Stuns and disables
-Ult not triggering. Manually trigger it if you must, tons of damage may override your ult and then you will die. High damage heroes may kill you without your ult ever triggering, but also Viper with its poison attack seems to not trigger your ultimate at all! Beware!
You now know everything you need to know to be the ultimate offlaner Abaddon. Time test this knowledge yourself and apply it to your own games. Just remember that every Dota game is slightly different. If you need to adjust your equipment don’t be afraid to do so. Some hero combinations will also counter your strategy, and you will have to adapt your own to that of your teammates. Learn from your victories and defeats, adapt and don’t despair: sometimes the tide can be turn really fast!
Do you agree with this guide? Feel free to share your own strategies in the comments below!
