Zeus is a midlane/offlane hero that relies almost entirely on his abilities and items, having very little right click damage but also excelling in several areas:

• He can easily take last hits in the laning phase (and quickly kill entire creep waves later into the game), using his Arc Lightning ability. You just need to have good mana regeneration and a decent mana pool.
• He can reveal invisible units and wards using his Lightning Bolt and Thundergod’s Wrath abilities.
• He can quickly burst down a target using his abilities, which deal a great amount of magical damage when cast sequentially.
• He can damage the entire enemy line-up with his ultimate ability, no matter where the heroes are on the map. This ability has global reach and can be used to secure the kill during a gank. It’s also used to spot smoke ganks and the position of enemy heroes when your team has poor map vision.

Zeus Item build

When playing Zeus in Dota 2 esports, your item build should be centered around several things: mana pool, mana regeneration, mobility, cast range and magical damage output. Subsequently, these are some of the key items you should consider buying:

• Arcane Boots: they allow you to use your abilities more frequently and also help your team with mana.
• Bottle: if you have good rune control or can often use the courier to Bottle crow, this item can give you good sustainability in the laning phase.
• Soul Ring: gives you strength, health regeneration and allows you to use a trick that can replenish a large percentage of your mana pool. Before using its active, put in your backpack or on the ground the mana giving items from your inventory. Pick them up or transfer them to your inventory immediately after (if you transfer them from your backpack you need to wait 6 seconds in order for them to become active again). Since the percentage of your remaining mana pool stays the same when adding or removing items (this a game mechanic), by doing this you will gain a lot more mana from the Soul Ring’s active ability (which gives you 150 mana). That’s because the mana amount (150) is added to a smaller mana pool and therefore, fills a larger percentage of that mana pool. So when you add your mana giving items back to your inventory, the percentage of your remaining mana stays the same and as a result you gain a lot more of it.
• Eul’s Scepter: it improves your mobility and mana regeneration, and gives you the ability to escape from dangerous situations by using its active on yourself. You can also use it to stop enemies from teleporting or simply to prevent them from running away.
• Aether Lens: increases your mana pool (by 450), cast range (by 250), and mana regeneration (by 1.25).
• Veil of Discord: gives you great stats overall, health regeneration, armor, and the ability to decrease your enemies’ magic resistance by 25%.
• Blink Dagger: allows you to more easily engage and disengage your enemies. Due to the hero’s burst damage potential, you can often blink close to an enemy support, use your Veil of Discord, and then kill it with a simple combination of spells. If the target doesn’t die from your combo and tries to run away, with the help of a Eul’s Scepter you can lift it up and then use your Arc Lighning and Lightning Bolt abilities one more time. This will almost always secure the kill.
• Force Staff: this is a good item for added mobility. You can also help teammates with it.
• Aghanim’s Scepter: in addition to health and mana, it enables you to use the Nimbus ability.

Other items that can be good on Zeus are Bloodstone, Octarine Core, Scythe of Vyse and Refresher.

Read Also: Is the Dota 2 10k MMR Club Still a Big Deal?

Zeus Abilities Explained

Arc Lightning

This ability has a long cast range (850) and very short cooldown (1.6 seconds) and allows you to easily farm creeps at every stage of the game. It’s also great against illusion based heroes, because it bounces up to 15 times (at level 4) in a 500 radius.

Lightning Bolt

This ability deals 100/175/275/350 magical damage and offers vision and true sight in a 750 radius for 4.5 seconds. It can be used to detect wards and damage invisible heroes. You can target this ability at the ground, and it will automatically search for a hero in a 375 radius. Using it this way allows you to hit and reveal targets that hide in the fog of war.

Static Field

Passively deals damage based on a target’s current health, whenever you cast a spell. The radius of this ability is 1200 and the damage it deals is 4%/6%/8%/10% of your opponents’ current health. It affects all units in the given radius, even those that are invisible or in the fog of war.

Thundergod’s Wrath

This ability allows Zeus to damage all enemy heroes that are not smoked or invisible, and reveal those that are, everywhere on the map.

Nimbus

This is an ability gained by purchasing an Aghanim’s Scepter. It acts as a source of Lightning Bolts and can be used globally. Once cast over a certain area, it creates a storm cloud that launches a Lightning Bolt every 2.25 seconds on nearby enemies. The source of the storm ca be destroyed by 4 attacks from melee heroes, 8 attacks from ranged heroes or 16 attacks from non-hero units. If it’s not destroyed, the storm lasts for 35 seconds.

Nimbus is a very powerful ability against heroes who rely on invisibility, mobility or hiding in the trees. It also allows you to assist your team during fights without being present.

Best Zeus Talents

• +25% XP gain / +6 armor – Zeus greatly benefits from having a higher level, so the experience talent is much better than the armor bonus.
• +1% Static Field damage / +40 movement speed – The movement speed is much more valuable than the Static Field damage.
• +0.5 Lightning Bolt ministun / +15% cooldown reduction – The 0.5s stun doesn’t seem like much, but it’s actually really good. And in most cases, it has a greater impact than the 15% cooldown reduction.
• +170 Arc Lightning damage / +200 cast range – The first talent more than doubles the damage of your Arc Lightning, so you should definitely take it.

Zeus Skill build

When playing Zeus, you should start with a point in Arc Lightning, followed by a point in Static Field and then another one in Arc Lightning. Afterwards you should maximize Lightning Bolt, Arc Lightning and Static Field in this order, putting points in your ultimate ability and taking talents whenever you can.

Read Also: Dota 2 Ranks - Complete Guide to MMR and Ranking

When to pick the hero

Zeus is very strong against illusion based heroes and line-ups that can’t get near you very easily. It’s also a great counter to heroes that have excellent mechanisms for dealing with physical damage, but are defenseless against magical damage. Example: Phantom Assassin, Troll Warlord.

Deal High Amounts of Magical Damage

Zeus is a hero capable of dealing high amounts of magical damage. He has poor mobility, right click damage and defensive capabilities, but he excels in many other areas and can be very effective against certain line-ups.

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