Witch Doctor Dota 2 Guide – Enhance Your Team in 7.07d

Witch Doctor is a support hero with a lot of strengths:

• He can stun groups of heroes for a cumulated 2/4/6/8 seconds duration (max) using his Paralyzing Cask ability.
• He can heal allies in a 500 radius at a rate of 16/24/32/40 HP per second using his Voodoo Restoration ability.
• He can curse enemy heroes with Maledict, making them take extra damage based on the health they lost after they got cursed.
• He can add a significant surplus of physical damage to his team’s offensive potential, using his Death Ward ability.

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Witch Doctor Item build

Witch Doctor is usually played as a position 5 support, meaning that he will buy the courier (+courier upgrade) and most of the wards for his team. However, because you often get kills and assists thanks to Maledict and Death Ward, in most cases you will have enough gold to buy a few items, which will improve your ability to deal damage and stun enemy heroes during fights. Here are some of the key items you should consider buying on this hero.

• Arcane Boots: they greatly increase your mana pool and also give you the equivalent of +2.45 mana regeneration per second, due to their active ability.
• Magic Wand: this is a good early game item on any hero.
• Infused Raidrop: further increases your mana regeneration, and blocks some of the magical damage that enemies throw at you.
• Urn of Shadows: allows you to heal yourself and allies and will boost your team’s sustainability. It also gives +50% mana regeneration.
• Force Staff: an excellent choice on any support hero. The HP regeneration, intelligence and added mobility are always very valuable. This item also gives you the ability to save allies from time to time.
• Glimmer Cape: good for escaping, initiating, increasing magic resistance and helping allies in difficult situations.
• Shadow Blade: similar to Glimmer Cape, but with a longer invisibility duration and less altruistic.
• Aghanim’s Scepter: this item greatly improves your ultimate ability and your offensive potential.
• Helm of the Dominator: the item is great not just for its aura, which gives surrounding allies +10 attack speed and +10 HP regeneration per second, but also for the Dominate ability, which allows you to find an Ogre Frostmage and then use its Ice Armor ability to increase your teammates’ armor by 8. This combination of armor and health regeneration, combined with a level 4 Voodoo Restoration, greatly boosts your teammates’ durability during prolonged fights, offering them +50 HP regeneration per second.

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Witch Doctor Abilities Explained

Paralyzing Cask

This allows you to launch a cask that damages and stuns enemies, jumping between them for up to 2/4/6/8 times. Against heroes, each stun lasts for 1 second and deals 50 magical damage. Against creeps, the stun duration is 5 seconds and the damage is 75/100/125/150. If the cask cannot fight an enemy to bounce to, it disappears.

Voodoo Restoration

This ability allows you to heal allies in a 500 radius. The heal amount and the mana consumed per second is 16/24/32/40 and 8/12/16/20. As you can see, having multiple points in this skill does not increase the heal per mana amount efficiency. The cost stays the same at every level, translating into 2 HP per 1 point of mana. Which is why you usually max out Voodoo Restoration last.

Maledict

This is one of the best offensive abilities in the game, and it allows you to greatly increase the damage taken by a hero based on how much damage you managed to deal to him after he’s been cursed by Maledict.

Death Ward

When using this ability, Witch Doctor summons a ward that attacks enemy heroes within 700 range, dealing physical damage. The target that is closest to the ward gets attacked first. The ward is channeled, so moving, using most items, casting spells or being disabled during its duration will stop it instantly. This ability can be upgraded with an Aghanim’s Scepter, granting the ward’s attacks true strike and allowing them to bounce between nearby enemies (4 maximum targets and 650 maximum bounce distance).

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Best Witch Doctor Talents

• +5 armor / +75 damage – The second option is much better than the first.
• +120 gold per minute / +2 Paralyzing Cask bounces – The first talent offers a lot more value in the long run, enabling you to buy powerful items such as Aghanim’s Scepter.
• +1 Maledict tick / +125 Death Ward attack range – Both of these talents are really useful, but you should generally take the second one, in anticipation of getting your Aghanim’s Scepter (if you don’t already have it at this point).
• +75 Death Ward damage / +1.5% max HP Voodoo Restoration – You should always take the Death Ward damage bonus.

Witch Doctor Skill build

When playing Witch Doctor, you should maximize Maledict First and go for a 1-1-4-1 build for the first 7 levels. Afterwards you should maximize Paralyzing Cask and Voodoo Restoration in this order, putting points in Death Ward and taking talents whenever you can.

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When to pick the hero

Witch Doctor is a good pick when you need a combination of sustainability, crowd control and damage. He also makes your safe lane very strong, as it is difficult for offlaners to deal with his abilities in the early game. The hero is an excellent choice against line-ups that tend to clump up, or use a 4 protect 1 strategy (because with Maledict, a key target can be killed quite easily during fights).

Conclusion

Witch Doctor is a hero that improves a line-ups safe lane, sustainability and team fight potential. All of his abilities are very useful and remain relevant throughout the game, making him a safe pick and a valuable support against most hero compositions.

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