Venomancer Dota 2 Guide – The King of Poison in Patch 7.07d

Dota 2
March 23, 2023
Denis Alihodzic

Venomancer is one of the strongest hybrid heroes in Dota 2, being able to deal both magical and physical damage in great amounts. He is generally played as a midlaner, having abilities which allow him to win most 1 vs 1 matchups.

Here are Venomancer’s main strengths:

  • He slow multiple enemies by 50% and deal up to 600 magical damage to them over 15 seconds, using his Venomous Gale ability.
  • He can deal up to 30 damage per second and slow a target’s movement speed by up to 14% for 15 seconds, using his Poison Sting ability.
  • He can summon wards that have 450 HP, deal 40 damage and apply Poison Sting, using his Plague Ward ability. Each of these wards lasts for 40 seconds.
  • He can poison enemy units in a 575 radius area and deal up to 80 damage per second to them, using his Poison Nova ability. The poison effect lasts for 16 seconds.
dota-2-venomancer

@ Valve

What Items to build on Venomancer

Venomancer’s item build should generally be designed to improve the hero’s mobility, durability and damage output. As a result, here are some of the items you should consider buying in order to succeed in Dota 2 esports:

  • Power Treads: they give you excellent stats and attack speed.
  • Ring of Aquila: gives you good stats, damage, armor and the mana regeneration you need in the early game.
  • Magic Wand: gives you +2 to all stats, +1.5 HP regeneration and is generally very useful in the early to mid game, thanks to its capacity to store and instantly use charges.
  • Veil of Discord: gives you good stats, armor, HP regeneration and the ablity to further reduce your targets’ magic resistance by 25%.
  • Blink Dagger: gives you great mobility and allows you to use your spells efficiently, hitting as many units as possible.
  • Hurricane Pike: gives you great stats, attack range, health regeneration and mobility.
  • Black King Bar: this item is essential if the enemy team has a lot of disables and you don’t have good enough crowd control and initiation in your line-up to neutralize them.
  • Manta Style: allows you to remove a lot of debuffs and confuse your enemies. It also gives a nice boost in multiple areas: movement speed, damage, attack speed and stats.
  • Linken’s Sphere: nice to have against long duration single target stuns and powerful ultimate abilities that pierce magic immunity: Duel, Rupture, Doom, Fiend’s Grip etc.
  • Butterfly: if you want a combination of damage, attack speed and survivability.
  • Mjolnir: this is an alternative to other damage dealing items, allowing you to kill creep waves much faster and deal high amounts of damage in team fights.
  • Eye of Skadi: gives you great stats and the ability to slow your enemies’ attack and movement speed even more. The item’s attack modifier pierces magic immunity.
  • Aghanim’s Scepter: improves your ultimate ability, making it deal significantly more damage.
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Venomancer Abilities Explained

Venomous Gale

Deals 25/50/75/100 initial damage and then another 5 instances of 10/40/70/100 damage, over a 15 seconds duration. Also slows the affected targets by 50% for the same duration.

Poison Sting

Enhances your basic attacks, making them deal 6/14/22/30 magical damage per second and slow movement speed by 11%/12%/13%/14%. The debuff lasts for 6/9/12/15 seconds.

Plague Ward

Summons a plague ward that lasts for 40 seconds, has 75/200/325/450 HP, deals 13/22/31/40 damage and applies Poison Sting (but with only 50% of its damage).

dota-2-venomancer-ingame

@ Valve

Poison Nova

Affects all enemy units in a 575 radius area, dealing 30/55/80 damage per second for 16 seconds.

The best Venomancer Talents

  • +90 gold per minute / -8s Venomous Gale cooldown – The first talent will give you a lot of bonus gold throughout the game, while the second one improves your farming speed and fighting potential.
  • +6% Poison Sting slow / +150 cast range – If you’re going for a tanky build and have the option of staying closer to the scene of the fight, take the first talent. Otherwise take the second one.
  • Venomous Gale’s hero impact summons 2 Plague Wards / +6s Poison Nova duration – Both of these talents are very good, so you should choose whichever you like.
  • 300% Plague Ward HP/damage / +600 Poison Nova AoE – Definitely take the first option.
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Skill build

When playing Venomancer, you should start with a point in either Venomous Gale or Poison Sting and then strive for a 1-1-4-1 build for the first 7 levels. Afterwards you alternate between Venomous Gale and Poison Sting, putting points in your ultimate and taking talents whenever you can.

When to pick the hero

Venomancer is a good pick whenever you want to push towers early, have a map vision advantage (thanks to the Plague Wards), severely limit the enemy’s mobility (slowing movement speed and canceling Blink Daggers), or simply deal a lot of damage over time (against heroes like Treant Protector or Templar Assassin for instance). He’s not the hardest Dota 2 hero to pick up, but definitely one of the more fun ones.

An Overall Great Carry

Venomancer is a carry hero that can be played in the safelane or midlane. He excels in many areas, making him a great pick for any of these positions.

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