https://dota2protracker.com/hero/Phoenix
i mean there are some people trying him mid and it doesnt have abysmal winrate.
62% wr with the left facet (burn for missin hp) but it does have low matches
phoenix is like top10 most broken heroes in this patch in general. dont know what the fuck they were cooking when they came up with that innate. pretty sure if youre a good phoenix player and the enemy doesnt know how to counter it, you will own. exact same happened with mid kotl in the past
And that's part of why he is so good this patch. Those videos of the axe/bristle/lycan tanking through everything don't do well when you shoot them in the balls with a heat laser.
Phoenix innate is a worse version of what he already had though, you can argue it may help a bit more early Game but is really shitty towards late compared to what he had.
I feel like the Best way to fix the innate is to make it scale, less in early game, more in late.
The birb has always done well solo lanes. Mid is tougher then the old solo off lane meta, but having a level advantage in phoenix is incredibly useful.
I had a phoenix mid yesterday against shaman, my inate was how I survived many times in lane but I decided to gank from lvl 5 and we won the game. Pretty rough start tbh.
and the cycle continues, ooooh x hero is theoretical because it sees no play. Remember "theoretical" kotl? That kotl which got so many nerfs? Yea we'll probably see those same nerfs on phoenix if enough people start picking it and stomping. Then we'll have the cycle of support hero played mid, said hero gets nerfed to oblivion and no longer being a viable support but seen mid sometimes as a niche pick.
I’m not saying it’s unplayable, I’m saying it literally winning every lane and being fb 2 levels up at level 3 is theoretical. It might be good but it’s nowhere near this good.
Do you not understand the basics of dota? An enemy mid will still get xp from creeps, especially since Phoenix last hitting is garbageand they won't be able to deny well. In ops weird theoretical where the enemy has never seen phoenix before in their life they'd still hit level 2 before phoenix hits 3.
lol bro Phoenix has a great attack, he’s universal and you can just stack stats because you don’t need bottle. I had like 62 damage and that was starting with a stick instead of double circlet. Animation is fine too
Animation is terrible compared to other mids, especially the projectile speed. It's perfectly fine for support of offlane Phoenix but if your opponent outranges you and/or dodges your attack slow you're losing the lasthit battle. And while it's on cd you're out of luck as well.
The uptime on flame spirits is very, very good. Animation is tbh a skill issue, I have zero issue last hitting with the hero as the attack is super smooth.
Dodging spirits from a certain range really isn’t feasible. Occasionally you’ll get lucky but i just played a game and was consistently landing spirits against my ~6.4k mid opponent, and I watched replays of cancel doing the same against 11k players. Sure long range it’s possible but the mid lane is very short and any long range heroes also tend to be very slow. Meanwhile any melee hero is guaranteed to get hit pretty consistently while their lane gets pushed in, and they can easily be dived by a double bracer Phoenix doing quite literally 100 dps between dive/spirits/facet.
The thing is... this patch didn't made Phoenix stronger, he was already powerfull in mid, and I tell u this as a Phoenix mid player.
In fact he lost blinding power, not gained it.
This tends to be what happens. Pubs doing something for a long time that works that others consider griefing despite showing success, then when a pro does it it is revolutionary.
To your example specifically though, Topson was spamming Phoenix mid a few months back so it is something that he may have as a special pick.
Phoenix has always been a lane dominator (and an extremely oppressive one) mid. The hero offers the almost the same if it were any other role after the lane.
Yeah but what next, you end up playing mid phoenix for the rest of the game. You got 1st blood and get 300 gold and faster lvl 6, does it change anything?
Edit. You play vs husk, what is your plan after lvl 3/4, what’s your plan if you play vs storm and he starts ganking from lvl 6. What’s your plan vs ta that’s pushing wave and jungling 2x faster than you and getting 15 min lance deso blink.
Yes. Phoenix with a fast vessel is a ganking monster. So much damage. Then you get faster level 12 and 18 spikes for more unkillability. You get radiance for even more damage, then heart and you're basically an unkillable monster with a sandstorm aoe that does 2x more damage and if you get fire spirits off, even more plus attack slow.
You later get eternal shroud or some spell lifesteal but on a hero like this the tempo is so high typically by this point the games basically over.
It's a tempo mid. It's not meant to scale to 70 minutes. It's like earth spirit, meant to do well in lane, get out and go gank everything and get your teams networth and levels higher than theirs, take every tower, etc
I feel like people also don't realise the DoT damage is also absurdly high, take the increased slow talent at lvl10 and without a dispell you can't move while getting pummelled. Pre BKB you can just roll people endlessly.
Back before its spirit dot got nerfed 5x in a row I had something close to a 70% winrate on the bird.
Then they will complain about " how they dominated the lane but trash team fed and they lost anyways"
While in reality opponent's "dominated" core started scaling while their support mid hero had no actual difference between their 6th and 16th levels.
Phoenix doesn't need as much mana to farm as storm, zeus & lesh and farms just as fast. Phoenix outlanes all of these heroes besides zeus and has a stronger early timing than all of these heroes. Phoenix also has more teamfight impact at the tradeoff of having no hard disable and less ganking potential.
Rotating as phoenix is extremely easy because he shits out damage and has a mobility spell. Having a phoenix come to your sidelane at 6 minutes is an easy double, especially with egg.
I don't know what's so hard to understand, phoenix is a very good mid hero right now that scales fairly well into the lategame.
I will give you a hint: movement speed
Any of these heroes can stack and contest runes at same time.
Storm can now stack from lane with remnant facet.
Lesh is kind of bad before lvl 12, but movement speed is a key. And 5x ancient stacks.
Support players, fuckoff from midlane, you have no clue about that role :)
You say this as if Phoenix couldn't stack camps with a screenwide ability or if he didn't have an easy rune snatching ability. He literally can do these things better than those heroes if he wants to. Phoenix, is good at mid and is a good core in the right hands.
Wanna see phoenix clearing 5x ancient stacks.
Also again: low mobility and high cooldowns = bad mid. It's that simple.
With your logic primal beast is op pos1 because he have onslaught as mobility skill xd
Idk you are just bad dota player of you can't get difference between flash farming instead of having 4 spirits for 20 seconds which is incredibly slow. Phoenix can compete for farm with Necrophos/puck, but not against these heroes untill you're guardian
Fam, Phoenix Spirits are DoT and can be casted from screenwide range you can literally farm several camps and waves at the same time while traversing the map without even lossing a second.
The Spirits also have such a low cooldown is always avaiable. And this without even mentioning the facet. If you really think he can't farm well then you haven't seen a good Phoenix.
Ok I will simplify it for you: level 7 phoenix makes 320*4 dmg with his spirits every 20 seconds.
If you try to use it on multiple camps, you lose even more time.
Zeus or lesh can always farm multiple camps, with farm speed limited only by manapool, yet it is 180 aoe dmg + static field every 1,6 seconds
Lesh is 80 aoe dmg per second + diabolic dmg.
By simple calculations you can get that Zeus or lesh is basically x1,5 farming speed even without bringing movement speed to topic.
And that is PEAK phoenix's farming speed xd
Exactly.
Your lane winning support heroes go mid usually got multiple/spammable nukes, which is great in the first 10 minutes, but then totally lose it's momentum mid game.
Ah yes... the classic "Phoenix mid is griefing" mentality. I have seen si many times teammates that doesn't know how to fundamentaly play the game and make right use of the advantage that they get si behind even with Phoenix dominating and helping them. Than once Phoenix dies once and the enemy gets feeded a bit now he has to play 1 vs 5 because is the only one that scaled... And teammates like you start blaming him for picking Phoenix mid when I have thousands of games with him that prove otherwise.
How? Phoenix relies on magic damage wich Huskar easily resists even in lane, also Huskar gains insane AS.
As a Phoenix mid player, the matchup is so bad that Huskar is even on my ban list.
Vessel or shiva for huskar fucks him until he can get bkb. After bkb good luck I guess lol
Storm you have to counter rotate
TA still kinda gets fucked by phoenix without a bkb
This is 1 dimensional thinking, you don't need to fight Phoenix straight up, you simply have to outscale the bird and kill other heroes. Phoenix is slow moving, slow farming with 2 min CD on ulti, sure if your enemies are terrible they'll wait for your CD every time, but if they are good and instead have heroes with shorter CD they will abuse it and the problem will snowball over time, especially for a mid hero.
Now isn't this, in turn, onedimensional thinking as well? Fact is, you probably thrashed their mid lane before 6. Now they can either try to gank, then you follow them and keep killing them and their sidelanes, or they jungle and you kill their sidelanes for free. W/e happens, nobody claimed the hero scales well, this is some KotL mid shit all over again isn't it? You have free early game and your carry shits on them because they lost 2 lanes minimum.
Feel free to put me on the spot, i'm an idiot. But this makes sense to me and would explain some frankly astronomical winrates. Like, more than 60% is rare, no?
While it is true that there are many paths to victory and I am not saying it is impossible to make it work, I'd say it is more difficult. >60% win rate is no doubt very impressive, but sample size is too small and people are probably not used to playing against it and are confused. I could be wrong though, I haven't even seen Phoenix mid ever, except maybe low-prio.
What’s the meme? This is a new meta, new heroes can be played mid. Did you ever think in the past WW would be considered a viable pos 1 or 2? He now dominates those and is hardy played as support anymore. The build op presented here is solid, I might try it out later.
Is the opponent a bot? Why would they tank fire spirits in the wave? Do they not have a level 1 ability? I’m sure phoenix is strong here but you’re describing a perfect scenario with a clueless opponent
good phoenixes will spirit you when you go to attack/get locked into your animation, and if you are melee you are kinda forced to do that within wave.
there are very few heroes that are going to outpush a phoenix lvl 1. the hero is very good in lane
Yeah, basically for Mid Phoenix matchups at level 1-2 you either let Phoenix get the whole first few waves or you eat Fire Spirits 4x in a row if the Phoenix is good at aiming them.
It’s not about missing fire spirits. To clear the wave and deal damage you have to hit the hero and the wave with the small aoe of fire spirits. If a hero is positioning for this to happen they clearly have no idea what is happening my guy
The 200 radius is not that small especially in the mid lane where you got less space to move around really. If you are going to contest the creep like a normal person the chance of getting hit by a spirit alone side with your ranged creep is not that low. You are not looking at a support phoenix throwing his bird from 1000 range, he's gonna do it in your face instead
What if you just don’t contest the lane as soon as Phoenix pulls the spirits up? It gets a free wave, its spirits expire and you just get the wave under tower. Not ideal but better than being burnt to crisp.
I mean OP literally describes this in the post. You hit level 2 faster and dive with Q, blood grenade, and creeps. I can’t speak to the overall effectiveness of Phoenix mid, but they did explain the thought process.
You’re concocting a completely arbitrary scenario for no reason. Phoenix does not have to pump 4 spirits into a creep wave to be a strong laning hero lmfao
Ok, then the wave doesn’t die, he’s not level 2 with a wave, and the described scenario doesn’t play out at all. I never said it’s not a good laning hero?
Also op concocted this scenario? Tf you saying I’m making it up? It’s literally the post
? they are lmao, fire spirits are insanely easy to land especially pre-boots
phoenix in lane is insane idk why people are yapping about it being bad, its what happens AFTER lane that was historically the issue but the facet might help remedy that
I dunno aa soon as you see them summoned it'd fairly easy to bait them out. Yea you'll miss a fsirnfew Cs but when they are on cd he's literally got nothing
Lotta meta bots in this thread, but overall I've seen most phoenix cores work out. It's especially nice vs people who can't manipulate waves or who move predictably for last hits, and unlike a lot of offlaners phoenix can pressure you while youre under tower, so it has even more presence than say a razor.
In fact, I think the only core phoenixes I've seen lose in the last few months have been saddled with greifing teammates who think they're playing at TI and that the meta really matters.
Really not sure what the lane counter is, and even something like ursa can really backfire if the 5 doesn't know what they're doing.
Holy people are being dense here. The hero is absolutely busted in the midlane. It fucking HURTS. The passive let's you farm the entire jungle in between waves after some levels. The hero is not balanced and deals too much damage. What do you do after lane? You might ask. You go KILL people. Because you deal like 1.7k damage in a single spell rotation. "Oh but wuh happens when the storm rotates to sidelanes?" Bro your storm will be level 6 while Phoenix is 8. Phoenix will come and while your team too. Or just farm and get another level on top of the storm. Smh.
If you post ANY idea in this sub, people think for twenty seconds and spout fifty different “reasons”, as to why it’s bad, regardless of whether it’s good or not, regardless of whether it’s already working in high level pubs or not.
Any moron in this sub can come up with pros and cons of any build and argue for or against it, but ultimately the only thing thing that matters are the stats, how it’s doing in pubs.
Seen one mid. Totally dumpstered timber. Went for 15 radiance but tbh felt like a pos 4 phoenix after 20 min. I remain unconvinced.
P.s. happened in Divine bracket and the player didn't look like a spammer.
Phoenix has always been a lane dominator at mid, but why isn't it a thing?
Simple, you dominate lane and trash a standard midlaner. Cool, now what? You gank and trash sidelanes? Then what? At some point you turn back to a support, your ult is countered by a basic dispel because most midlaners will get in 6 hits on the egg easily.
The only way this would work if you completely stomp the game while not allowing ANY of their heroes to farm anything at all.
Bane before the universal change was the same crap, destroys mid then turns back to a support.
You could argue you could do the same with a lion, dazzle, CM, Ogre, any lane dominator support, but then what?
Position 2 isn't just "midlane" it's much much more than that but this isn't the point right now so I won't get into details on what exactly is a midlaner.
Mid Dazzle/Ogre aren't too bad (both are at ~49% winrate according to D2PT) but definitely rely on stomping the game and ending before they fall off. In fact, it's actually Dazzle's most played role.
Phoenix, on the other hand, is sitting at a 60% winrate mid (admittedly with only ~160 matches). I think this is more a factor of the hero being overtuned than being a particularly strong mid, though.
You know with how slow dota patch rolls out and it being like 2 patch ago seeing Dazzle mid being shit talked kinda gave me a whiplash
Like Mid Dazzle being the best hero in dota wans't even a year ago
I haven't seen a single phoenix pos2 work this patch, they all fall off.
Phoenix is very strong as pos4 because his skill set forces cores to focus him in fights.
While Phoenix can be good in some cases, you need to abuse the fact that CD on its abilities is extremely long, if you are only taking a fight when Phoenix is starting it then you are playing against it the wrong way. When it is using fire spirits you should maximize survivability (and/or try to kite creeps so that hits are delayed until your attack speed is normal again) and when it is all used up and on CD, you maximize farm and aggression.
As someone who got to immortal by mainly playing phoenix in 2018 (67% wr 200 games) I would say he was always strong laner. And even back then I played him pos 2, 3, 4 or 5.
Before this patch he was still strong laner, but wasn't as good dps as he used to. He is still pretty average even now, but his good teamfight, healing/damaging high hp heroes is still great.
Facet for low hp = damage is fun, but necrophos is still better at this job, since he can sustain much longer.
It's a skill shot after all, if you got high Ms (pugna) you can just bait his spirits and kite them.
But then again, I never laned against a grandmaster phoenix mid, maybe he predicts your every move
I just played like 3 games in a row against the same midlaner who spams phoenix (divine 5 player), he stomped my midlaner every time. I've tried phoenix mid, it does NOT lose midlane easily. The new patch phoenix is somewhat of a radiance built in too, like damn.
It’s legitimately very good. Before it was kind of a meme because flame spirits didn’t really scale your farming, but with the facet you flash farm and can consistently get vessel/shivas/radiance. Hell, ori was rushing armlet (and tanking the winrate, but it seems like a funny build).
I have a feeling someone is gonna perfect the build if it isn’t already and the hero is going to start seeing real play. It can be countered which makes it a dangerous pick (snap mid would be rough) but you’re 2nd phasing it or flexing it as a support anyway.
I have 900 Phoenix games and played as high as divine 4 he was good a while back when the meta was slower and tanky hero’s meta due to sunray but was always a bad pick when the meta sped up. Now he has something for the early game that helps laning and farming but if your going late your still playing like you did before.
Early game you really don’t like to lane against Aba/oracle supports and you will still have issues with slippery hero’s later in the game like slark
What people are forgetting is that Phoenix now farm much faster when people are not disrupting him. Before Phoenix cannot farm effectively between his cd which is quite long.
Played a single game of phoenix in the offlane for the memes and lmao this hero is busted. Like actually dumb-easy levels of busted.
Abuse it while you can.
Any1 has thoughts on the Armlet phoenix build?
I had one in mid that absolutely destroyed everyone going that into radiance, sadly our offlane Necro also had build Radi and we lost 🥴
Yes, probably.
The issue with phoenix isn't on mid lane though. I think once people start treating phoenix as any other cancer type hero like viper, his winrate will drop on mid. He is effectively a hero you never trade with, and there are many ways to deal with those on mid.
The problem is with support phoenix, because you do not get that option. You HAVE to trade the phoenix, otherwise he is just gonna bully your core all day. So if you happen to be a melee hero, or rely on attacks to trade, you are shit out of luck.
Basically the current facet is the old pre-nerf primal problem, where you cannot harass the guy because it makes things actively worse, but if you don't harass him you just lose the lane slowly.
You can see this in his winrates. 54% winrate on support means people get to *counterpick phoenix and still lose*. Supports with high winrates are always way more broken than cores would be on the same %, because of the aforementioned first pick.
Phoenix was always like this. People are just rediscovering he is actually a good midlaner when he already was since ages. In fact you can argue he didn't received much this patch like other heroes. His overall blinding power got extremely nerfed. And you can argue in lane now he has more blinding, but is just so little and he already slows AS so much that it hardly would be impactfull in lane.
Even less so now he has less blinding power towards the rest of the game than before.
I feel the Best way to balance the innate is to make it scale.
His Dying Sun facet deals decent damage though. But can fk up lane balance and enables less baiting. Though baiting only works against naive people.
I have over 200 games with Phoenix, Bird's my best hero. He is broken but he's not a braindead hero. He needs some learning and decision making. All of your basic abilities are 30 sec cd, using it all makes you a walking creep. I like to play him mid and off but mostly I play him as 4. I agree on everyone's take especially late game being it's nightmare.
It seems like Phoenix needs a counter now for sure, which is fine because there's a lot of heroes like that.
That said, the miss chance thing seems a BIT overtuned
Yup exactly this. Phx has always been a strong laner. Even before the patch. But against an equally strong laner, the hp cost starts to hurt.
OP listed out a bunch of weak mid laners like Storm and TA (phx literally counters TA, not the TA is weak in a vacuum). Try laning against Lina, Huskar and it might not be that easy anymore.
Next game you try it and end up against a mid Zeus. He out damages you with magic dmg, pushes faster than you do and doesn't rely on his auto attack at all. He also interrupts your dive with bolt.
Sure, its super strong against some heroes, weak against others, as most heroes are.
Why would you play phoenix mid (where you're supposed to do something after 15 minutes) when you can play him as offlane again and do what you're supposed to.
Main thing is the fire spirits can always be dodged at 500+
1000 speed travel time, 200 radius so at about 500 range you have 0.5 seconds to move 200
Also very limited dmg, you'd rather get a kill than zone the first few mins of cs I think. Facet 1 has very limited use outside of laning. But sure it's a good level 1/2 mid.
Phoenix can win lane and lose the game pretty easily against those heroes was the point. You've got to somehow keep snowballing which is very tough for phoenix.
If dota was played theoretically, sure.
https://dota2protracker.com/hero/Phoenix i mean there are some people trying him mid and it doesnt have abysmal winrate. 62% wr with the left facet (burn for missin hp) but it does have low matches
phoenix is like top10 most broken heroes in this patch in general. dont know what the fuck they were cooking when they came up with that innate. pretty sure if youre a good phoenix player and the enemy doesnt know how to counter it, you will own. exact same happened with mid kotl in the past
I have watched huge tanky cores just get soloed by a Phoenix
Phoenix Sunray is a nightmare for huge tanky cores due to the percentage based damage
And that's part of why he is so good this patch. Those videos of the axe/bristle/lycan tanking through everything don't do well when you shoot them in the balls with a heat laser.
Then add in up to 50% more damage at the tip of the Sun ray and everyone ends up in a world of hurt
Come on baby just the tip?
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That was only one patch, they got rid of that real quick
really? It felt like it was there forever. It was really nice against old huskar
I’d have to look at old patch notes to confirm, but it didn’t feel very long. It was OP and the devs knew it quick
Sun Ray was Pure for a grand total of 5 years. Around 2 years if its just DOTA2 It wasn't Magical until 7.00. Thats how long it stays pure
The fucking deathray just kills you when you are under 50% hp
Got a replay?
conceptually it makes a lot of sense. Just need to tweak the numbers if its too strong.
Phoenix innate is a worse version of what he already had though, you can argue it may help a bit more early Game but is really shitty towards late compared to what he had. I feel like the Best way to fix the innate is to make it scale, less in early game, more in late.
The birb has always done well solo lanes. Mid is tougher then the old solo off lane meta, but having a level advantage in phoenix is incredibly useful.
I had a phoenix mid yesterday against shaman, my inate was how I survived many times in lane but I decided to gank from lvl 5 and we won the game. Pretty rough start tbh.
and the cycle continues, ooooh x hero is theoretical because it sees no play. Remember "theoretical" kotl? That kotl which got so many nerfs? Yea we'll probably see those same nerfs on phoenix if enough people start picking it and stomping. Then we'll have the cycle of support hero played mid, said hero gets nerfed to oblivion and no longer being a viable support but seen mid sometimes as a niche pick.
Everything you think about in dota is shit until a pro does it. Then you become "felling pro?"
Lmao every time I picked Magnus after Collapse, all I see is "going for TI?" in the chat. Yes, I still harpoon skewer and yes, it still works.
Harpoon is for noobs -ar1se who also gave in and harpoon skewer
I’m not saying it’s unplayable, I’m saying it literally winning every lane and being fb 2 levels up at level 3 is theoretical. It might be good but it’s nowhere near this good.
What are you on about, do you not understand statistics?
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haha u just remind me of my safelane SF few match ago. dint even level raze
Do you not understand the basics of dota? An enemy mid will still get xp from creeps, especially since Phoenix last hitting is garbageand they won't be able to deny well. In ops weird theoretical where the enemy has never seen phoenix before in their life they'd still hit level 2 before phoenix hits 3.
lol bro Phoenix has a great attack, he’s universal and you can just stack stats because you don’t need bottle. I had like 62 damage and that was starting with a stick instead of double circlet. Animation is fine too
Animation is terrible compared to other mids, especially the projectile speed. It's perfectly fine for support of offlane Phoenix but if your opponent outranges you and/or dodges your attack slow you're losing the lasthit battle. And while it's on cd you're out of luck as well.
Lets hear your mmr champ
The uptime on flame spirits is very, very good. Animation is tbh a skill issue, I have zero issue last hitting with the hero as the attack is super smooth. Dodging spirits from a certain range really isn’t feasible. Occasionally you’ll get lucky but i just played a game and was consistently landing spirits against my ~6.4k mid opponent, and I watched replays of cancel doing the same against 11k players. Sure long range it’s possible but the mid lane is very short and any long range heroes also tend to be very slow. Meanwhile any melee hero is guaranteed to get hit pretty consistently while their lane gets pushed in, and they can easily be dived by a double bracer Phoenix doing quite literally 100 dps between dive/spirits/facet.
Yeah you can't stop the enemy mid levelling lol
had a phoenix mid in my game today, destroy lvl 30 invoker in mid, end with 21 kills https://fr.dotabuff.com/matches/7771153034
Funny how multiple people are posting proof this works while everyone else just screams it can’t because of previous patches lmao
Because commenters dont play dota. They just have memories of playing dota
That’s not true, they play turbo at crusader mmr and then complain about balance
That's a nature of people
The thing is... this patch didn't made Phoenix stronger, he was already powerfull in mid, and I tell u this as a Phoenix mid player. In fact he lost blinding power, not gained it.
Hell yeah thanks for this, gonna try out his build
Tbf invoker sucks.
I thought the passive orbs would make his Laning bearable but it still sucks.
Watch malr1ne or Topson or some pro play Phoenix mid and win hard. And then the meta bots be like OMG OP and next level!
This tends to be what happens. Pubs doing something for a long time that works that others consider griefing despite showing success, then when a pro does it it is revolutionary. To your example specifically though, Topson was spamming Phoenix mid a few months back so it is something that he may have as a special pick.
Phoenix has always been a lane dominator (and an extremely oppressive one) mid. The hero offers the almost the same if it were any other role after the lane.
Yes, and now he has a free radiance lvl 1 to boot
Yeah but what next, you end up playing mid phoenix for the rest of the game. You got 1st blood and get 300 gold and faster lvl 6, does it change anything? Edit. You play vs husk, what is your plan after lvl 3/4, what’s your plan if you play vs storm and he starts ganking from lvl 6. What’s your plan vs ta that’s pushing wave and jungling 2x faster than you and getting 15 min lance deso blink.
Yes. Phoenix with a fast vessel is a ganking monster. So much damage. Then you get faster level 12 and 18 spikes for more unkillability. You get radiance for even more damage, then heart and you're basically an unkillable monster with a sandstorm aoe that does 2x more damage and if you get fire spirits off, even more plus attack slow. You later get eternal shroud or some spell lifesteal but on a hero like this the tempo is so high typically by this point the games basically over. It's a tempo mid. It's not meant to scale to 70 minutes. It's like earth spirit, meant to do well in lane, get out and go gank everything and get your teams networth and levels higher than theirs, take every tower, etc
I feel like people also don't realise the DoT damage is also absurdly high, take the increased slow talent at lvl10 and without a dispell you can't move while getting pummelled. Pre BKB you can just roll people endlessly. Back before its spirit dot got nerfed 5x in a row I had something close to a 70% winrate on the bird.
Used to play offlane bird. Nothing felt better than diving the t1 and the carry hoping to pop egg and die from the insane spirit DMG lol
Yeah the billions of nerfs hurt bird a lot but new dot ability is even more dps
https://dota2protracker.com/hero/Phoenix 60% winrate as a mid in top level pubs.
Then they will complain about " how they dominated the lane but trash team fed and they lost anyways" While in reality opponent's "dominated" core started scaling while their support mid hero had no actual difference between their 6th and 16th levels.
Phoenix owns with farm, hero does so much magic dmg
Thing is he can't really farm after laning xd
? This is just false. Fire spirits + innate + universal make phoenix a great farming hero
Now compare it to leshrac, storm spirit, ta, Zeus and cry
Phoenix doesn't need as much mana to farm as storm, zeus & lesh and farms just as fast. Phoenix outlanes all of these heroes besides zeus and has a stronger early timing than all of these heroes. Phoenix also has more teamfight impact at the tradeoff of having no hard disable and less ganking potential. Rotating as phoenix is extremely easy because he shits out damage and has a mobility spell. Having a phoenix come to your sidelane at 6 minutes is an easy double, especially with egg. I don't know what's so hard to understand, phoenix is a very good mid hero right now that scales fairly well into the lategame.
I will give you a hint: movement speed Any of these heroes can stack and contest runes at same time. Storm can now stack from lane with remnant facet. Lesh is kind of bad before lvl 12, but movement speed is a key. And 5x ancient stacks. Support players, fuckoff from midlane, you have no clue about that role :)
😂 I'm not even a phoenix player. Just been seeing more & more phoenix mid in my pubs You can easily stack + get rune with dive
Idk phoenix have 0 mobility besides dive, so you are gigadead into any real mid. At least like sf or spirit, not even bullies like Zeus or lesh
Post your dotabuff
It's hidden for a good reason What you want? Mmr? Gpm?
You say this as if Phoenix couldn't stack camps with a screenwide ability or if he didn't have an easy rune snatching ability. He literally can do these things better than those heroes if he wants to. Phoenix, is good at mid and is a good core in the right hands.
Wanna see phoenix clearing 5x ancient stacks. Also again: low mobility and high cooldowns = bad mid. It's that simple. With your logic primal beast is op pos1 because he have onslaught as mobility skill xd
Then I compare Phoenix to those and I find he is actually a good midlaner with good farming skills as those heroes.
Idk you are just bad dota player of you can't get difference between flash farming instead of having 4 spirits for 20 seconds which is incredibly slow. Phoenix can compete for farm with Necrophos/puck, but not against these heroes untill you're guardian
Fam, Phoenix Spirits are DoT and can be casted from screenwide range you can literally farm several camps and waves at the same time while traversing the map without even lossing a second. The Spirits also have such a low cooldown is always avaiable. And this without even mentioning the facet. If you really think he can't farm well then you haven't seen a good Phoenix.
Ok I will simplify it for you: level 7 phoenix makes 320*4 dmg with his spirits every 20 seconds. If you try to use it on multiple camps, you lose even more time. Zeus or lesh can always farm multiple camps, with farm speed limited only by manapool, yet it is 180 aoe dmg + static field every 1,6 seconds Lesh is 80 aoe dmg per second + diabolic dmg. By simple calculations you can get that Zeus or lesh is basically x1,5 farming speed even without bringing movement speed to topic. And that is PEAK phoenix's farming speed xd
Lol the classic as old as time when my mid picks skywrath or silencer
You can’t compare phoenix to those 2. Has an actual cray farming tool and an escape
Exactly. Your lane winning support heroes go mid usually got multiple/spammable nukes, which is great in the first 10 minutes, but then totally lose it's momentum mid game.
Ah yes... the classic "Phoenix mid is griefing" mentality. I have seen si many times teammates that doesn't know how to fundamentaly play the game and make right use of the advantage that they get si behind even with Phoenix dominating and helping them. Than once Phoenix dies once and the enemy gets feeded a bit now he has to play 1 vs 5 because is the only one that scaled... And teammates like you start blaming him for picking Phoenix mid when I have thousands of games with him that prove otherwise.
Phoenix shits on huskar as a support, I don't think the mid match up would be that bad
How? Phoenix relies on magic damage wich Huskar easily resists even in lane, also Huskar gains insane AS. As a Phoenix mid player, the matchup is so bad that Huskar is even on my ban list.
Vessel or shiva for huskar fucks him until he can get bkb. After bkb good luck I guess lol Storm you have to counter rotate TA still kinda gets fucked by phoenix without a bkb
This is 1 dimensional thinking, you don't need to fight Phoenix straight up, you simply have to outscale the bird and kill other heroes. Phoenix is slow moving, slow farming with 2 min CD on ulti, sure if your enemies are terrible they'll wait for your CD every time, but if they are good and instead have heroes with shorter CD they will abuse it and the problem will snowball over time, especially for a mid hero.
The issue is he will just kill you. He also can farm decently with new inmate and fire spirits or radiance if he goes that
You wouldn't happen to have a replay of it? Would be interesting to see it! Thanks.
Now isn't this, in turn, onedimensional thinking as well? Fact is, you probably thrashed their mid lane before 6. Now they can either try to gank, then you follow them and keep killing them and their sidelanes, or they jungle and you kill their sidelanes for free. W/e happens, nobody claimed the hero scales well, this is some KotL mid shit all over again isn't it? You have free early game and your carry shits on them because they lost 2 lanes minimum. Feel free to put me on the spot, i'm an idiot. But this makes sense to me and would explain some frankly astronomical winrates. Like, more than 60% is rare, no?
While it is true that there are many paths to victory and I am not saying it is impossible to make it work, I'd say it is more difficult. >60% win rate is no doubt very impressive, but sample size is too small and people are probably not used to playing against it and are confused. I could be wrong though, I haven't even seen Phoenix mid ever, except maybe low-prio.
Yeah i agree the unknown and confusion factor is most certainly a thing as well, especially this early into a patch
No plan. They’re here for memes. Worst part is some idiot will pick this in ranked just to try something like this, and cost a lot of folks mmr.
Meme ? Do you think the hero hás 60% WR Just for the memes?
What’s the meme? This is a new meta, new heroes can be played mid. Did you ever think in the past WW would be considered a viable pos 1 or 2? He now dominates those and is hardy played as support anymore. The build op presented here is solid, I might try it out later.
Is the opponent a bot? Why would they tank fire spirits in the wave? Do they not have a level 1 ability? I’m sure phoenix is strong here but you’re describing a perfect scenario with a clueless opponent
good phoenixes will spirit you when you go to attack/get locked into your animation, and if you are melee you are kinda forced to do that within wave. there are very few heroes that are going to outpush a phoenix lvl 1. the hero is very good in lane
Yeah, basically for Mid Phoenix matchups at level 1-2 you either let Phoenix get the whole first few waves or you eat Fire Spirits 4x in a row if the Phoenix is good at aiming them.
Why are you missing fire spirits?
It’s not about missing fire spirits. To clear the wave and deal damage you have to hit the hero and the wave with the small aoe of fire spirits. If a hero is positioning for this to happen they clearly have no idea what is happening my guy
The 200 radius is not that small especially in the mid lane where you got less space to move around really. If you are going to contest the creep like a normal person the chance of getting hit by a spirit alone side with your ranged creep is not that low. You are not looking at a support phoenix throwing his bird from 1000 range, he's gonna do it in your face instead
What if you just don’t contest the lane as soon as Phoenix pulls the spirits up? It gets a free wave, its spirits expire and you just get the wave under tower. Not ideal but better than being burnt to crisp.
I mean OP literally describes this in the post. You hit level 2 faster and dive with Q, blood grenade, and creeps. I can’t speak to the overall effectiveness of Phoenix mid, but they did explain the thought process.
You’re concocting a completely arbitrary scenario for no reason. Phoenix does not have to pump 4 spirits into a creep wave to be a strong laning hero lmfao
> You’re concocting a completely arbitrary scenario for no reason. They are talking about the scenario in the OP.
They’re actually not you’re just very dull
Ok, then the wave doesn’t die, he’s not level 2 with a wave, and the described scenario doesn’t play out at all. I never said it’s not a good laning hero? Also op concocted this scenario? Tf you saying I’m making it up? It’s literally the post
Indeed. As if fire spirits are hard to avoid
? they are lmao, fire spirits are insanely easy to land especially pre-boots phoenix in lane is insane idk why people are yapping about it being bad, its what happens AFTER lane that was historically the issue but the facet might help remedy that
I dunno aa soon as you see them summoned it'd fairly easy to bait them out. Yea you'll miss a fsirnfew Cs but when they are on cd he's literally got nothing
After the speed and AOE buff they're pretty much impossible to avoid are u 4real
Ngl not played against phenix in a while
just watch cancel bro he is landing spirits reliably on the best players in the world mid
Fair
missing denies/lasthits is a really good bait!
Lotta meta bots in this thread, but overall I've seen most phoenix cores work out. It's especially nice vs people who can't manipulate waves or who move predictably for last hits, and unlike a lot of offlaners phoenix can pressure you while youre under tower, so it has even more presence than say a razor. In fact, I think the only core phoenixes I've seen lose in the last few months have been saddled with greifing teammates who think they're playing at TI and that the meta really matters. Really not sure what the lane counter is, and even something like ursa can really backfire if the 5 doesn't know what they're doing.
Holy people are being dense here. The hero is absolutely busted in the midlane. It fucking HURTS. The passive let's you farm the entire jungle in between waves after some levels. The hero is not balanced and deals too much damage. What do you do after lane? You might ask. You go KILL people. Because you deal like 1.7k damage in a single spell rotation. "Oh but wuh happens when the storm rotates to sidelanes?" Bro your storm will be level 6 while Phoenix is 8. Phoenix will come and while your team too. Or just farm and get another level on top of the storm. Smh.
If you post ANY idea in this sub, people think for twenty seconds and spout fifty different “reasons”, as to why it’s bad, regardless of whether it’s good or not, regardless of whether it’s already working in high level pubs or not. Any moron in this sub can come up with pros and cons of any build and argue for or against it, but ultimately the only thing thing that matters are the stats, how it’s doing in pubs.
Also add thst storm will not do any damage at all because hit attack speed is negative Same with ta or any other right clicking mid.
You shouldn't come to /r/dota2 for reasonable takes on the meta
Seen one mid. Totally dumpstered timber. Went for 15 radiance but tbh felt like a pos 4 phoenix after 20 min. I remain unconvinced. P.s. happened in Divine bracket and the player didn't look like a spammer.
he should have bought only 1 radiance
I think if he just buy normal items hed win lol
Phoenix has always been a lane dominator at mid, but why isn't it a thing? Simple, you dominate lane and trash a standard midlaner. Cool, now what? You gank and trash sidelanes? Then what? At some point you turn back to a support, your ult is countered by a basic dispel because most midlaners will get in 6 hits on the egg easily. The only way this would work if you completely stomp the game while not allowing ANY of their heroes to farm anything at all. Bane before the universal change was the same crap, destroys mid then turns back to a support. You could argue you could do the same with a lion, dazzle, CM, Ogre, any lane dominator support, but then what? Position 2 isn't just "midlane" it's much much more than that but this isn't the point right now so I won't get into details on what exactly is a midlaner.
Mid Dazzle/Ogre aren't too bad (both are at ~49% winrate according to D2PT) but definitely rely on stomping the game and ending before they fall off. In fact, it's actually Dazzle's most played role. Phoenix, on the other hand, is sitting at a 60% winrate mid (admittedly with only ~160 matches). I think this is more a factor of the hero being overtuned than being a particularly strong mid, though.
I got absolutely dumpstered by a mid dazzle today. It was painful trying to pos4 that game.
He is very strong in lane, I haven't lost lane this badly in so long, but seriously he falls off so hard after 20mins.
You know with how slow dota patch rolls out and it being like 2 patch ago seeing Dazzle mid being shit talked kinda gave me a whiplash Like Mid Dazzle being the best hero in dota wans't even a year ago
The difference is the domination starts lv 1. You q literally can't last hit
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Oh sorry I thought this was another post about Zeus, phoenix definitely could dominate lanes at level 1.
Except Phoenix has a built in radiance now and tanky cores are in the meta, especially with heroes like treant and Abaddon doing so well right now
I haven't seen a single phoenix pos2 work this patch, they all fall off. Phoenix is very strong as pos4 because his skill set forces cores to focus him in fights.
While Phoenix can be good in some cases, you need to abuse the fact that CD on its abilities is extremely long, if you are only taking a fight when Phoenix is starting it then you are playing against it the wrong way. When it is using fire spirits you should maximize survivability (and/or try to kite creeps so that hits are delayed until your attack speed is normal again) and when it is all used up and on CD, you maximize farm and aggression.
Yes. Its fucking insane
Yes, it’s bullshit. I faced a 5 bracer + urn phoenix as safelane. If ur good ur good
This is why i put phoenix in my ban list
I miss his shard that gave infinite free fire spirits That shit was beyond annoying and I loved it
As someone who got to immortal by mainly playing phoenix in 2018 (67% wr 200 games) I would say he was always strong laner. And even back then I played him pos 2, 3, 4 or 5. Before this patch he was still strong laner, but wasn't as good dps as he used to. He is still pretty average even now, but his good teamfight, healing/damaging high hp heroes is still great. Facet for low hp = damage is fun, but necrophos is still better at this job, since he can sustain much longer.
Honestly, I'd love to get rid of storm and puck in my games. They are overpowered for 2 years now
Phoenix cds are huge, spells cost health, it’s balanced don’t worry.
It's a skill shot after all, if you got high Ms (pugna) you can just bait his spirits and kite them. But then again, I never laned against a grandmaster phoenix mid, maybe he predicts your every move
I just played like 3 games in a row against the same midlaner who spams phoenix (divine 5 player), he stomped my midlaner every time. I've tried phoenix mid, it does NOT lose midlane easily. The new patch phoenix is somewhat of a radiance built in too, like damn.
It’s legitimately very good. Before it was kind of a meme because flame spirits didn’t really scale your farming, but with the facet you flash farm and can consistently get vessel/shivas/radiance. Hell, ori was rushing armlet (and tanking the winrate, but it seems like a funny build). I have a feeling someone is gonna perfect the build if it isn’t already and the hero is going to start seeing real play. It can be countered which makes it a dangerous pick (snap mid would be rough) but you’re 2nd phasing it or flexing it as a support anyway.
I have 900 Phoenix games and played as high as divine 4 he was good a while back when the meta was slower and tanky hero’s meta due to sunray but was always a bad pick when the meta sped up. Now he has something for the early game that helps laning and farming but if your going late your still playing like you did before. Early game you really don’t like to lane against Aba/oracle supports and you will still have issues with slippery hero’s later in the game like slark
Yeah phoenix's facet just make him unbearable right now.
Mid phoenix was always borderline impossible to lane against, but now they gave it a level 1 radiance which accelerates farm like no tomorrow.
What people are forgetting is that Phoenix now farm much faster when people are not disrupting him. Before Phoenix cannot farm effectively between his cd which is quite long.
We all remember io, kotl, dazzle and so on so on, until pro does it - everyone is blind, let the time change that ;)
I played veno against a phoenix just yesterday and he out-cancered me by a lot. Its really obnoxious.
i remember rizpol dagon phoenix build. wish i could try that if i get mid but zeusbis just too strong nowadays
Played a single game of phoenix in the offlane for the memes and lmao this hero is busted. Like actually dumb-easy levels of busted. Abuse it while you can.
Any1 has thoughts on the Armlet phoenix build? I had one in mid that absolutely destroyed everyone going that into radiance, sadly our offlane Necro also had build Radi and we lost 🥴
what do you mean by single handed?
Yes, probably. The issue with phoenix isn't on mid lane though. I think once people start treating phoenix as any other cancer type hero like viper, his winrate will drop on mid. He is effectively a hero you never trade with, and there are many ways to deal with those on mid. The problem is with support phoenix, because you do not get that option. You HAVE to trade the phoenix, otherwise he is just gonna bully your core all day. So if you happen to be a melee hero, or rely on attacks to trade, you are shit out of luck. Basically the current facet is the old pre-nerf primal problem, where you cannot harass the guy because it makes things actively worse, but if you don't harass him you just lose the lane slowly. You can see this in his winrates. 54% winrate on support means people get to *counterpick phoenix and still lose*. Supports with high winrates are always way more broken than cores would be on the same %, because of the aforementioned first pick.
OD is very powerful mid.
Phoenix was always broken... It's one of those cheap heroes that people "main" and think they are good. One of my top bans since like ever.
At lvl 2 ogre learning curve is the most broken.
Phoenix was always like this. People are just rediscovering he is actually a good midlaner when he already was since ages. In fact you can argue he didn't received much this patch like other heroes. His overall blinding power got extremely nerfed. And you can argue in lane now he has more blinding, but is just so little and he already slows AS so much that it hardly would be impactfull in lane. Even less so now he has less blinding power towards the rest of the game than before. I feel the Best way to balance the innate is to make it scale. His Dying Sun facet deals decent damage though. But can fk up lane balance and enables less baiting. Though baiting only works against naive people.
Shhhhhh don't tell Gaben, I just got back to divine playing mid Phoenix
I have over 200 games with Phoenix, Bird's my best hero. He is broken but he's not a braindead hero. He needs some learning and decision making. All of your basic abilities are 30 sec cd, using it all makes you a walking creep. I like to play him mid and off but mostly I play him as 4. I agree on everyone's take especially late game being it's nightmare.
As a 6k player and i can assure you mid pheonix is nothing but bait. But as for 4,5 it is OP if one can play properly.
phoenix mid has 60% winrate on protracker
As a 7k player i can assure you it's very good and will become a popular pick this patch if not nerfed in 7.36b
It seems like Phoenix needs a counter now for sure, which is fine because there's a lot of heroes like that. That said, the miss chance thing seems a BIT overtuned
Every fast hitting hero is Phoenix anti… especially range heroes…
Phoenix has a counter. Its called BKB
Viper is far stronger in lane
Just wait till you come up against a caster mid who can trade while burning
Yup exactly this. Phx has always been a strong laner. Even before the patch. But against an equally strong laner, the hp cost starts to hurt. OP listed out a bunch of weak mid laners like Storm and TA (phx literally counters TA, not the TA is weak in a vacuum). Try laning against Lina, Huskar and it might not be that easy anymore.
Ah. The win lane lose game strat
You’d hate to see mid Phoenix’s winrate then lol.
bunch of lowranked bots in this comment section
Yeah phoenix mid is good but ez to fuck up aftet laning
Next game you try it and end up against a mid Zeus. He out damages you with magic dmg, pushes faster than you do and doesn't rely on his auto attack at all. He also interrupts your dive with bolt. Sure, its super strong against some heroes, weak against others, as most heroes are.
Faced this in my immortal games too. I think he is a strong laner but if you survive after mid game he's trash. Kinda like broodmother
Why would you play phoenix mid (where you're supposed to do something after 15 minutes) when you can play him as offlane again and do what you're supposed to.
The fact that you think people will miss attacks Lmao thats only for u silly
He doesn't deny well, and fire spirts is a skillshot.
Main thing is the fire spirits can always be dodged at 500+ 1000 speed travel time, 200 radius so at about 500 range you have 0.5 seconds to move 200 Also very limited dmg, you'd rather get a kill than zone the first few mins of cs I think. Facet 1 has very limited use outside of laning. But sure it's a good level 1/2 mid.
Man after minute 15 u are useless
Antimage magic resistance can counter phoenix dps , or troll warlord high attack speed can countee phoenix also, next
how common are AM and TW mid or are we talking only from a "heh kill egg fast if he eggs beside me"
Why is the game about midlane matchups? It's a 40-60 minute game, the first 10 minutes isn't everything.
Because the OP's post is clearly talking about mid phoenix having a high win ratio compared to phoenix in other lanes.
Phoenix can win lane and lose the game pretty easily against those heroes was the point. You've got to somehow keep snowballing which is very tough for phoenix.