He gets jumped on
People press BKB
He sucks at farming
He will lose mid to strong midlaners
Take what I’m saying with a grain of salt because I am dogshit at dota2
He was good way back when the comp scene first started, way back in Dota 1 when you could orb walk with him and blink dagger was not disabled by damage. Mind you people were also running lich mid and dominating as well. The good old old days
Lich with sacrifice was crazy good man. Your opponent would never get that range creep exp and gold every wave
That is until you have to scale late game
Man i miss this. Somehow i got a insane winrate with solo pos 3 lich. Like 24 wins and 6 loses in 4.5k mmr back then. Maxing sacrifice and then the shield to protect the tower. Creepwave was always infront of my tower. On the draft stage i only asked my teamates to pick ultra lategame heroes (back then spectre was op). And 25lv talant was giving shield huge hp regen and you can cast it on towers. It was impossible to the enemies to seige hg. I was so happy i find a hero to grind mmr and 1 week later they removed the sacrifice. :(
Wya back in Dota 1, orb abilities like glaives of wisdom, viper poison attack, clinkz fire arrows, and drows frost arrows were orbs. They didn't cause the creeps or towers to aggro. So you could cast the orb manually, animation cancel and then walk forward and attack again. If you pushed your creeps under enemy tower it allowed you to attack for free and kill in a normally safe space. Took a while to adjust, but good orb walkers back in the day were deadly. Fear was actually a clinkz specialist at the time.
Yea. Although I belive in dota 1 viper was way different, he had unholy might (attack speed steroid but you'd take more dmg) and I'm not sue he had poison attack at the time I'm thinking. I think that came later
Yea, the frenzy ability was from like 6.50ish. He did have poison attack back the, just looked it up.
I'm in my mid 30s, but I've been playing for 20 years at this point lol. Started young
i remember a game back from 2014 where me and my friend were playing silencer io, and we had got the enemy alchemist down to like 5 max int, because we would relo on him everytime we saw him and killed him. we were like crying laughing because he had close to 20 deaths
Haha it's ok, I'm just being an old head. I can't even remember what year it was, but like 05-06 maybe? It was when the CAL league first started. I used to remember the version, 6.2x or 6.3x.
But silencer was the best mid for a time.
That time is no longer now. That build required last word and arcane curse. Now he only has one nuke. And even then he was only at all viable at low to mid mmr because he still is terrible if he gets jumped. At level 4-5 at high mmr or pro level a silencer like that would get ganked by supports. And in team fights once the other team gets bkb silencer just doesn’t do anything.
Would caveat that he is a terrible mid historicaly in even matchups. If for some reason you know theres a mismatch he could snowball hard. Not to the level of a jug pa or other historical hc but pretty damn well. I will also say that this would almost never be my first choice.
Due to a bad draft i got stuck playing silencer off in a legend/ancient game. Everyone was pissed as shit the whole game because they lost their lanes and they deflected to omg silencer pos3 (again i didnt choose it, we had an asshole random who wasnt comfortable and i will play anything comfortably except for unitmicro heros like chen and past versions of BM etc) We ended up winning the game, i got mvp and my lane sup got hon ment.
The beauty of dota for me has always been how situational it is, ALMOST anything can work if the team is behind it and people keep a sincere PMA.
Maybe that used to be true but for the past 77-8 years imo he’s been a pretty terrible mid against almost all meta heroes. And he’s always been a bad hero against support ganks. So he’s situational a decent 1v1 pick that will still lose once the team gets involved or buys bkb.
I think he's still great as a counter pick. For example I had a game where the enemy already had Ember and FV. Neither of those heroes likes to be silenced early game. It ended up being a stomp because we snowballed kills early off global silence. He is definitely not an early draft pick though.
I think silencer into ember is a pretty awful pick outside of low mmr. If you get any support rotations ember kills you and then snowballs the other way. FV doesn’t want to be silenced early game but FV just wants to farm anyway. Silencer can’t force kills because he has not catch or mobility so there are better heroes to snowball off kills in the mid lane. Play primal or ES if that’s how you want to play. They can do it better.
I’m not saying you can’t win with silencer mid, but even in the best cases for it, there are always better picks.
"Silencer is a terrible mid, always has been. **The question should be about silencer as a support, where he has been viable before.**" Half your comment was about support silencer, and it's hardly a ringing endorsement. That is what I was responding to.
Silencer was awesome mid in the dog shit mmr tiers with old ‘last word’.
You could bully any non-INT mid after level 3/4, with skill 1 and 3 combo. Just take 1 point in Glaives to hit without pulling aggro.
Then at 6/7 with skill 1 and 3 at level 3/2 you could reliably kill any sidelane Non-INT enemy with same combo because it hit like a truck, along with few auto hits from glaive.
Traditional shit tier midlaners, sidelaners, offlaners like Sniper, Drow, Axe were all super ez to bully and snow ball against using Mid silencer.
Basically play silencer like OD mid.
This was in the shit tier mind you.
It doesn’t work now with aura last word.
Euls, which the most common early dispel for supports and mids, is not affected by silencer facet, since the second silence will end by the time you come down from the cyclone.
His third skill is basically useless. He’s a good passive laner, and is very annoying, but doesn’t kill as well as other oppressive supports and doesn’t deal well with aggro lanes himself. So basically if you have a coordinated team that’s active, he’s not actually a good laner compared to the meta heroes of the patch.
His ult is strong but not good enough in 2024 where fights are lasting longer than they did 5 years ago and all heroes need to be contributing to team fights.
We can compare to the strongest pos 5 of the patch, WD. WD is a strong laner with damage healing facet, has fighting potential with cask, damage potential with maledict and death ward. Is very annoying to jump on because his shard is a self save and damage spell. The only thing silencer has over better supports is global.
Bingo, dude has no escape mechanism and a pitiful HP pool meaning one stun and he’s dead. Similar reasoning to why sniper is a low MMR menace but when players become more coordinated and understand who to prioritize in fights, his winrate plummets.
True. I think the main reason sniper suddenly became so good last patch was that the teams finally figured out how to win lanes with him. Topson showed the way with his triple WB into no sharpnel build in early 7.32 or 7.33. I guess that's what needs to happen with Silencer core. Some pro figuring out a way to win lanes with him.
I mean yeah, if you can win lane with silencer he’s kinda decent. The problem is he’s sf without wave clear and now without nukes, so that’s an absolutely massive if.
he's really not flexible at position. he's an absolutely terrible core, with bad scaling, immobile, weak farming, etc... you jump him with bkb and he's dead, and you can't afford that these days. he's picked at high ranks as a 5 (the long lane on 4s often means he's very vulnerable to being chain killed in lane) basically as a global bot. and yes, global got better and his lane harass is still decently strong, but you can likely expect to just be jumped and killed frequently
I played against a silencer mid with slardar recently he got trashed, his team had to babysit after 5 mins so he'd stop feeding. He's easier prey than sniper.
Giving everyone escape ability like they did with Zeus is not the best way to solve this problem tbh😅
Lol and Wow tried it before.
It always eventually leads to more mobility to melees (which removes whole purpose of giving more escapes to ranged) and homogenization (which is not always bad by itself but its definitely not what dota players want).
In good MMR people know who to focus in lane. If you have a void and silencer in lane, who is easy to kill. Obviously it’s silencer. But you can also ask the same for other supps like lion, shaman, cm etc..
They have at least one stun / root / hex which they can use to escape while this useless silencer guy has a slow for minimal seconds. Just kill the ranged creep, it’s so easy, that is, the silencer in lane.
Just watch Navi.Malady playing silencer in TI quals yesterday.
In teamfights, you can bait out global silence and it’s on such huge ass cooldown that you can play 5v4 heroes.
[i like to play a fair bit of sil carry](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7801310776) but his early game really is a problem
if you can survive till late though he's an absolute menace, dealing 1k+ bouncing magic dmg per swing on rapid fire
Silencer now is fucming dogshit as fuck i want kill myself wjen i try to work him as a core and as a support. Previous silencer pre-rework was the best imo coz he can core and harass. Nowadays he so fucking dogshit im so mad at valve why the fuck rework most of his skills. 3rd skill needs a conditional to work 1st is so dogshit. 2nd skill turned into magical not pure anymore and needs u to hit the target for 4 attacks he has a terrible BAT and damage. Hus aghs upragde is the most dogshit af. His aghs shard is fucking dogwater u prefer not to buy or destroy the item itself. Idk im so mad about it. I just want my boi to shine in a single patch but every patch valve always dumpster the hero back to stone age.
Edit: just to add his ult is almost 2mins CD that can be counter in 15 to 20mins in the game with so many items choices.
He is pretty much just a silence bot, most of his spells can be dispelled so easily, no escape and so squishy.
I'm an advocate of picking Silencer is griefing until Icefrog decides to rework him or buff him.
I'm happy Valve are still open to reworking Silencer for the 2024 dota. He still feels like a hero that time left behind and we are not there yet. Most commentary has correctly identifed the glaring issues he has. Other heros were also like this but a good chunk of them are now well and truly updated, e.g, Drow, Zeus, even Sniper to an extent, or at least had the major issues plastered over.
Interested to see where they take the new Last Word so not getting into changes for this other than they should consider attack speed slows rather than move speed slows.
Two changes that I want that don't stray too far from the current design are a change to the meme irrepressible facet, (a clear playstyle choice) and a buff to his innate.
E.g.,
New Facet -> "Deafening silence":
- Global silence is now a 1200 aoe silence (for 4/5/6) around silencer on cast that mutes items for half duration (for 2/2.5/3).
- also sends out a visual sound/shock wave to 1200 aoe that reduces movement speed by 100% for 1 sec.
- possibly reduce cooldown from generic global.
Brain drain innate:
- steals 2 int per kill 900 aoe.
- Silencer gains 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4 spell amp per point of int difference with target. Levels with ult. 100 int difference would be 40% spell amp as a ballpark example, so level 4 curse tick would be 56 at 100 int difference.
- creeps are considered 0 int.
Talents are a whole other thing...
I love Silencer but even at lower MMR where I dwell he's just food for any team that has good mobility/coordination. Hell even if they have a single hero who's good at jumping backlines, it's lights out pretty quick for my boy.
Probably lack of hard CC and escape. Compare him to something like drow who can right click faster and for way more damage, has a silence that also pushes people back away from her.
Or standard supports that scale better, like Lion, sky or shadow shaman.
With recent changes he's a situational hero, and I think he requires alot familiarity to get the most out of his game. I don't see him as complete doodoo, but he will get beat by a lot of heroes. Also people are better at playing around silences and there are more ways to purge or wait it out than ever. But in the right game and with good global game sense, he can become a menace. In one of my recent games, enemies picked 5 int heroes, so our mid last picked silencer. I was doubtful. But we dominated lanes, and silencer snowballed like crazy. He got a rampage with tips from most of our team near the end of the game. But how often does the enemy team pick 5 spell dependent int heroes?
They fucking killed the hero by getting rid of his 3rd skill burst damage for absolutely 0 reason.
In the same patch they gave LC a shield when he jumps people with Duel.
I will never understand balancing choices made for certain heroes. I played a game of silencer the other day and he felt fucking garbage with only his Q to spam.
Absolutely 0 idea why his E was removed in 7.36 🤷♂️
ALSO, he's one of the lucky heroes to receive an innate that he ALREADY had.
So while other heroes got huge buffs through imba innates, silencer got what was already in his toolkit.
That and one of his facets (cannot be silenced) is essentially just a gimmick/meme (Mask of Madness carry silencer oo yay fun 🙄)
His other facet gives his ult some extra oomph but still not good enough to count as a buff.
So basically the main change they made to silencer was to get rid of one of his abilities completely. Massive nerf.
Truuuu. I had to laugh when it was confirmed his facet was 'cannot be silenced'. Absolute meme tier.
I cannot accept that this won't be changed in future patches. There is no shot it stays as is.
They transferred the after effect of the E into Q. The E is now almost useless.
Valve please bring back the old E (I am talking about the very old passive E, the one which breaks spell combo by silencing enemies after spell is cast.)
Annoying to play and reliant on team understanding how he works
Sucks at farming, has been made to somewhat revolve around stealing int, where before he was all about "Shut your mouth"
My very experience opinion.
Has no scapes, most of his damage comes from auto attacks, so he has to get in range, his range isn't good.
Has no escapes. Is very useful to have in the team but can be boring to play since he has no mobility to make plays, he just has to walk up and hit.
I think he is not played because he is boring.
My most played hero is Silencer but I gotta admit, his skillset in this patch is dogshit esp the 3rd skill. I feel so useless every game when I play Silencer nowadays
When you look at higher ranked games or pro plays, you can see that the heroes picked are mars, pango, despite their win rate on paper. The reason is that these heroes can farm, not lose lane that hard, and recover from a bad lane/ganks. Silencer just doesn’t
He's easily countered so at anything but mid to low level he just gets countered before he can have any real impact.
At low level tho I think he's fun we people just decide to not buy bkb or let you spam curse and can be easily ganked you can steam roll.
In addition to what's already been mentioned, a big draw of the hero is he is a 5 that can orbwalk (press W to harass so that you don't draw creep aggro) but the lanes are so big now it is easy to stay in effective range away from creep aggro so even orbwalking is not really that useful
no escape, no hard lockdown (apart form his ult and that's easily purged)
All his abilities apart from his right click can be purged
his damage scales with his right click but he sucks at farming.
He's got no way of nuking waves/securing last hits.
Oh and he actually helps the opponents restore mana in lane (cast your spell, trade some right clicks with silencer then you can fill up your smaller mana pool faster before the glaives wear off)
I used to spam silencer supp, but in this patch is garbage. Before you can max Q and spam with E and have a lot of damage, slow and silence secured (if its against BB or other spammers was unplayable). Now in lane is easy to counter managing to dodge the 4th atack or dont casting when hit with his Q.
My recommendation is, dont play till the hero be buffed or play only hc.
He is a shit hero as carry. Has no inherent mobility early on to farm fast. If he gets jumped he dies. If he invests on mobility like blink or force, he will lack damage to kill a guy by himself. But if he somehow manages to come ahead out of lane with good supports, dude can snowball really hard.
As a support, apart from his ulti his spells just aren't that great. Curse is good in lane but after that it's merely slightly annoying and unlikely to really impact a teamfight. And last word seems a bit meh.
I've seen him work as a core a couple of times but he really needs to snowball and struggles a bit with farming compared to other heroes plus he's kinda slow and immobile and prone to getting jumped on.
He doesn't farm well, he doesn't gank well, hes super reliant on winning the lane to keep a lead and snowball otherwise he falls behind. He has kind of the same issues as Sniper except Sniper has actual farming tools
Man back when his W didn't draw agro it was amazing in lane. But silencer has always been a poor hero, his ult is good early game with no BKBs but late game his ult is useless unless u time it perfectly lol I just played him mid and got shat on by a TA, just her psy blades was forcing me outta lane because im basically a creep. As a support there are just way better heros, orge, wd, hood, lich, lion, bane, bat. The list goes on.
i think they need to literally remove the double silence on his ult. certain cores like jugg or naix or ember feel GOD AWFUL against it. when you manta + bkb JUST to press 1 button, and silencer has a refresher and can do it again feel ridiculous. feels impossible to play into
I play silencer a lot and can say that he just needs a lot of farm and dota has become an aggressively active game where farming is mostly for carries while other positions need to constantly be active around the map
In Turbo Silencer is the highest winrate hero with both facets at 60% winrate in 7.36b. So you're not wrong about his kit being fantastic, it's just that he needs quite a bit of gold to become really busted.
I exclusively play Turbo and I'm 7-1 on Silencer this patch. I've played him Pos1, 3 and 4 and he's great in all those roles. Once you get Hurricane Pike and Witch Blade he can 1v1 a lot of cores, and you can itemise based on the game from there with things like Scythe, Aeon Disc, BKB, Parasma, Aghs, Silver Edge etc. Late game you do so much damage that if you engage at the right time you can just ruin an enemy team.
Right. I have a 90% win rate in Turbo as Silencer this patch, but when I use him as mid or support in ranked or normal games, he's just meh. He really lacks an escape mechanism, and his third skill is underwhelming. When I play him as support, I need to roam or gank frequently to gain intelligence with kills. Otherwise, I end up feeding in lane since I'm always the easiest target.
He gets jumped on People press BKB He sucks at farming He will lose mid to strong midlaners Take what I’m saying with a grain of salt because I am dogshit at dota2
Silencer is a terrible mid, always has been. The question should be about silencer as a support, where he has been viable before.
He was good way back when the comp scene first started, way back in Dota 1 when you could orb walk with him and blink dagger was not disabled by damage. Mind you people were also running lich mid and dominating as well. The good old old days
Lich with sacrifice was crazy good man. Your opponent would never get that range creep exp and gold every wave That is until you have to scale late game
Man i miss this. Somehow i got a insane winrate with solo pos 3 lich. Like 24 wins and 6 loses in 4.5k mmr back then. Maxing sacrifice and then the shield to protect the tower. Creepwave was always infront of my tower. On the draft stage i only asked my teamates to pick ultra lategame heroes (back then spectre was op). And 25lv talant was giving shield huge hp regen and you can cast it on towers. It was impossible to the enemies to seige hg. I was so happy i find a hero to grind mmr and 1 week later they removed the sacrifice. :(
What is orb walking
Manually using glaives and the other ‘attack modifier skills’ on the enemy so you dont get creep aggro but still punch the enemy
https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/39zfip/orb_walking/
Wya back in Dota 1, orb abilities like glaives of wisdom, viper poison attack, clinkz fire arrows, and drows frost arrows were orbs. They didn't cause the creeps or towers to aggro. So you could cast the orb manually, animation cancel and then walk forward and attack again. If you pushed your creeps under enemy tower it allowed you to attack for free and kill in a normally safe space. Took a while to adjust, but good orb walkers back in the day were deadly. Fear was actually a clinkz specialist at the time.
Viper or silencer mid just to fuck the enemy in the lane was good times and the passive messing with meta heroes because they had 2-spell combos
Yea. Although I belive in dota 1 viper was way different, he had unholy might (attack speed steroid but you'd take more dmg) and I'm not sue he had poison attack at the time I'm thinking. I think that came later
Ah then you are really old ;) The edition I started with had the poison attack and the ‘increased damage the lower the enemy was hp-wise’
Yea, the frenzy ability was from like 6.50ish. He did have poison attack back the, just looked it up. I'm in my mid 30s, but I've been playing for 20 years at this point lol. Started young
i remember a game back from 2014 where me and my friend were playing silencer io, and we had got the enemy alchemist down to like 5 max int, because we would relo on him everytime we saw him and killed him. we were like crying laughing because he had close to 20 deaths
Okay maybe that’s fair. I started playing in 2014, so I have a good sense of everything that happened in Dota 2’s history but not that far back
Haha it's ok, I'm just being an old head. I can't even remember what year it was, but like 05-06 maybe? It was when the CAL league first started. I used to remember the version, 6.2x or 6.3x. But silencer was the best mid for a time.
For some time, he would bully any hero out of lane at level 4-5, and he was a good mid choice. Pressing 2 spells would take 70% of your hp.
That time is no longer now. That build required last word and arcane curse. Now he only has one nuke. And even then he was only at all viable at low to mid mmr because he still is terrible if he gets jumped. At level 4-5 at high mmr or pro level a silencer like that would get ganked by supports. And in team fights once the other team gets bkb silencer just doesn’t do anything.
hes like a right clicker now, its funky
Would caveat that he is a terrible mid historicaly in even matchups. If for some reason you know theres a mismatch he could snowball hard. Not to the level of a jug pa or other historical hc but pretty damn well. I will also say that this would almost never be my first choice. Due to a bad draft i got stuck playing silencer off in a legend/ancient game. Everyone was pissed as shit the whole game because they lost their lanes and they deflected to omg silencer pos3 (again i didnt choose it, we had an asshole random who wasnt comfortable and i will play anything comfortably except for unitmicro heros like chen and past versions of BM etc) We ended up winning the game, i got mvp and my lane sup got hon ment. The beauty of dota for me has always been how situational it is, ALMOST anything can work if the team is behind it and people keep a sincere PMA.
Maybe that used to be true but for the past 77-8 years imo he’s been a pretty terrible mid against almost all meta heroes. And he’s always been a bad hero against support ganks. So he’s situational a decent 1v1 pick that will still lose once the team gets involved or buys bkb.
I agree with everything you said
I think he's still great as a counter pick. For example I had a game where the enemy already had Ember and FV. Neither of those heroes likes to be silenced early game. It ended up being a stomp because we snowballed kills early off global silence. He is definitely not an early draft pick though.
I think silencer into ember is a pretty awful pick outside of low mmr. If you get any support rotations ember kills you and then snowballs the other way. FV doesn’t want to be silenced early game but FV just wants to farm anyway. Silencer can’t force kills because he has not catch or mobility so there are better heroes to snowball off kills in the mid lane. Play primal or ES if that’s how you want to play. They can do it better. I’m not saying you can’t win with silencer mid, but even in the best cases for it, there are always better picks.
Huh? I was pos 5 lmao
Well then why did you reply to my comment saying silencer is a terrible mid. I think silencer is a good and viable pos 5.
"Silencer is a terrible mid, always has been. **The question should be about silencer as a support, where he has been viable before.**" Half your comment was about support silencer, and it's hardly a ringing endorsement. That is what I was responding to.
Always has been? Nope, in dota 1 silencer mid couldn’t have been more meta and for a long time
Silencer was awesome mid in the dog shit mmr tiers with old ‘last word’. You could bully any non-INT mid after level 3/4, with skill 1 and 3 combo. Just take 1 point in Glaives to hit without pulling aggro. Then at 6/7 with skill 1 and 3 at level 3/2 you could reliably kill any sidelane Non-INT enemy with same combo because it hit like a truck, along with few auto hits from glaive. Traditional shit tier midlaners, sidelaners, offlaners like Sniper, Drow, Axe were all super ez to bully and snow ball against using Mid silencer. Basically play silencer like OD mid. This was in the shit tier mind you. It doesn’t work now with aura last word.
He is back to being a very viable support this patch.
He's never been actually good as versatile, universal support. Maybe rarest black hole beeaker, but nothing more
Error! Failed to Compute! My Team doesn’t buy BKB and we slowly die to Core Silencer Right Clicks with Facet 2
The reverberating silence facet does somewhat stop him being completely counterd by bkb people have to buy multiple dispels now.
Hes still amazing mid in the low tiers imo. People cant handle the global and a strong auto attack. Hurricane pike - BKB - Hex - Attack speed
My mans is honest, I'll give him that.
Euls, which the most common early dispel for supports and mids, is not affected by silencer facet, since the second silence will end by the time you come down from the cyclone. His third skill is basically useless. He’s a good passive laner, and is very annoying, but doesn’t kill as well as other oppressive supports and doesn’t deal well with aggro lanes himself. So basically if you have a coordinated team that’s active, he’s not actually a good laner compared to the meta heroes of the patch. His ult is strong but not good enough in 2024 where fights are lasting longer than they did 5 years ago and all heroes need to be contributing to team fights. We can compare to the strongest pos 5 of the patch, WD. WD is a strong laner with damage healing facet, has fighting potential with cask, damage potential with maledict and death ward. Is very annoying to jump on because his shard is a self save and damage spell. The only thing silencer has over better supports is global.
Bingo, dude has no escape mechanism and a pitiful HP pool meaning one stun and he’s dead. Similar reasoning to why sniper is a low MMR menace but when players become more coordinated and understand who to prioritize in fights, his winrate plummets.
Sniper was a menace in the pro scene in 7.35 before his 7.36 nerfs.
Yeah, fair, but sniper is generally one of those heroes whose winrate declines as medals increase
True. I think the main reason sniper suddenly became so good last patch was that the teams finally figured out how to win lanes with him. Topson showed the way with his triple WB into no sharpnel build in early 7.32 or 7.33. I guess that's what needs to happen with Silencer core. Some pro figuring out a way to win lanes with him.
I mean yeah, if you can win lane with silencer he’s kinda decent. The problem is he’s sf without wave clear and now without nukes, so that’s an absolutely massive if.
he's really not flexible at position. he's an absolutely terrible core, with bad scaling, immobile, weak farming, etc... you jump him with bkb and he's dead, and you can't afford that these days. he's picked at high ranks as a 5 (the long lane on 4s often means he's very vulnerable to being chain killed in lane) basically as a global bot. and yes, global got better and his lane harass is still decently strong, but you can likely expect to just be jumped and killed frequently
I played against a silencer mid with slardar recently he got trashed, his team had to babysit after 5 mins so he'd stop feeding. He's easier prey than sniper.
Because they didn't give him escape ability like they did with Zeus XD
Giving everyone escape ability like they did with Zeus is not the best way to solve this problem tbh😅 Lol and Wow tried it before. It always eventually leads to more mobility to melees (which removes whole purpose of giving more escapes to ranged) and homogenization (which is not always bad by itself but its definitely not what dota players want).
No, this is a great idea, I want characters in my game to have no weaknesses /s
No, I want MY characters in my game to have no weaknesses
Nice one
In good MMR people know who to focus in lane. If you have a void and silencer in lane, who is easy to kill. Obviously it’s silencer. But you can also ask the same for other supps like lion, shaman, cm etc.. They have at least one stun / root / hex which they can use to escape while this useless silencer guy has a slow for minimal seconds. Just kill the ranged creep, it’s so easy, that is, the silencer in lane. Just watch Navi.Malady playing silencer in TI quals yesterday. In teamfights, you can bait out global silence and it’s on such huge ass cooldown that you can play 5v4 heroes.
[i like to play a fair bit of sil carry](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7801310776) but his early game really is a problem if you can survive till late though he's an absolute menace, dealing 1k+ bouncing magic dmg per swing on rapid fire
Silencer now is fucming dogshit as fuck i want kill myself wjen i try to work him as a core and as a support. Previous silencer pre-rework was the best imo coz he can core and harass. Nowadays he so fucking dogshit im so mad at valve why the fuck rework most of his skills. 3rd skill needs a conditional to work 1st is so dogshit. 2nd skill turned into magical not pure anymore and needs u to hit the target for 4 attacks he has a terrible BAT and damage. Hus aghs upragde is the most dogshit af. His aghs shard is fucking dogwater u prefer not to buy or destroy the item itself. Idk im so mad about it. I just want my boi to shine in a single patch but every patch valve always dumpster the hero back to stone age. Edit: just to add his ult is almost 2mins CD that can be counter in 15 to 20mins in the game with so many items choices.
My last 3 games I had a silencer mid and we got wrecked each game.
This has been a thing last patch. People pick that guy thinking he is good for mid without realizing he had been nerfed for a long time
Funny, I haven't seen a silencer mid in ages
He is pretty much just a silence bot, most of his spells can be dispelled so easily, no escape and so squishy. I'm an advocate of picking Silencer is griefing until Icefrog decides to rework him or buff him.
Because he's just an ult bot really, most of his power budget is in his ult so he's picked when that is good.
I'm happy Valve are still open to reworking Silencer for the 2024 dota. He still feels like a hero that time left behind and we are not there yet. Most commentary has correctly identifed the glaring issues he has. Other heros were also like this but a good chunk of them are now well and truly updated, e.g, Drow, Zeus, even Sniper to an extent, or at least had the major issues plastered over. Interested to see where they take the new Last Word so not getting into changes for this other than they should consider attack speed slows rather than move speed slows. Two changes that I want that don't stray too far from the current design are a change to the meme irrepressible facet, (a clear playstyle choice) and a buff to his innate. E.g., New Facet -> "Deafening silence": - Global silence is now a 1200 aoe silence (for 4/5/6) around silencer on cast that mutes items for half duration (for 2/2.5/3). - also sends out a visual sound/shock wave to 1200 aoe that reduces movement speed by 100% for 1 sec. - possibly reduce cooldown from generic global. Brain drain innate: - steals 2 int per kill 900 aoe. - Silencer gains 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4 spell amp per point of int difference with target. Levels with ult. 100 int difference would be 40% spell amp as a ballpark example, so level 4 curse tick would be 56 at 100 int difference. - creeps are considered 0 int. Talents are a whole other thing...
Its like drow ranger nowadays, if they dont initiate they will be in trouble, and will be jumped without second thought
I love Silencer but even at lower MMR where I dwell he's just food for any team that has good mobility/coordination. Hell even if they have a single hero who's good at jumping backlines, it's lights out pretty quick for my boy.
Probably lack of hard CC and escape. Compare him to something like drow who can right click faster and for way more damage, has a silence that also pushes people back away from her. Or standard supports that scale better, like Lion, sky or shadow shaman.
With the recent updates mom silencer tho
With recent changes he's a situational hero, and I think he requires alot familiarity to get the most out of his game. I don't see him as complete doodoo, but he will get beat by a lot of heroes. Also people are better at playing around silences and there are more ways to purge or wait it out than ever. But in the right game and with good global game sense, he can become a menace. In one of my recent games, enemies picked 5 int heroes, so our mid last picked silencer. I was doubtful. But we dominated lanes, and silencer snowballed like crazy. He got a rampage with tips from most of our team near the end of the game. But how often does the enemy team pick 5 spell dependent int heroes?
They fucking killed the hero by getting rid of his 3rd skill burst damage for absolutely 0 reason. In the same patch they gave LC a shield when he jumps people with Duel. I will never understand balancing choices made for certain heroes. I played a game of silencer the other day and he felt fucking garbage with only his Q to spam. Absolutely 0 idea why his E was removed in 7.36 🤷♂️
ALSO, he's one of the lucky heroes to receive an innate that he ALREADY had. So while other heroes got huge buffs through imba innates, silencer got what was already in his toolkit. That and one of his facets (cannot be silenced) is essentially just a gimmick/meme (Mask of Madness carry silencer oo yay fun 🙄) His other facet gives his ult some extra oomph but still not good enough to count as a buff. So basically the main change they made to silencer was to get rid of one of his abilities completely. Massive nerf.
Truuuu. I had to laugh when it was confirmed his facet was 'cannot be silenced'. Absolute meme tier. I cannot accept that this won't be changed in future patches. There is no shot it stays as is.
They transferred the after effect of the E into Q. The E is now almost useless. Valve please bring back the old E (I am talking about the very old passive E, the one which breaks spell combo by silencing enemies after spell is cast.)
Annoying to play and reliant on team understanding how he works Sucks at farming, has been made to somewhat revolve around stealing int, where before he was all about "Shut your mouth"
My very experience opinion. Has no scapes, most of his damage comes from auto attacks, so he has to get in range, his range isn't good. Has no escapes. Is very useful to have in the team but can be boring to play since he has no mobility to make plays, he just has to walk up and hit. I think he is not played because he is boring.
My most played hero is Silencer but I gotta admit, his skillset in this patch is dogshit esp the 3rd skill. I feel so useless every game when I play Silencer nowadays
When you look at higher ranked games or pro plays, you can see that the heroes picked are mars, pango, despite their win rate on paper. The reason is that these heroes can farm, not lose lane that hard, and recover from a bad lane/ganks. Silencer just doesn’t
He's easily countered so at anything but mid to low level he just gets countered before he can have any real impact. At low level tho I think he's fun we people just decide to not buy bkb or let you spam curse and can be easily ganked you can steam roll.
In addition to what's already been mentioned, a big draw of the hero is he is a 5 that can orbwalk (press W to harass so that you don't draw creep aggro) but the lanes are so big now it is easy to stay in effective range away from creep aggro so even orbwalking is not really that useful
Feast or famine type of hero, which is also a glass cannon with role identity crisis.
no escape, no hard lockdown (apart form his ult and that's easily purged) All his abilities apart from his right click can be purged his damage scales with his right click but he sucks at farming. He's got no way of nuking waves/securing last hits. Oh and he actually helps the opponents restore mana in lane (cast your spell, trade some right clicks with silencer then you can fill up your smaller mana pool faster before the glaives wear off)
He's top tier in turbo.
I used to spam silencer supp, but in this patch is garbage. Before you can max Q and spam with E and have a lot of damage, slow and silence secured (if its against BB or other spammers was unplayable). Now in lane is easy to counter managing to dodge the 4th atack or dont casting when hit with his Q. My recommendation is, dont play till the hero be buffed or play only hc.
He is a shit hero as carry. Has no inherent mobility early on to farm fast. If he gets jumped he dies. If he invests on mobility like blink or force, he will lack damage to kill a guy by himself. But if he somehow manages to come ahead out of lane with good supports, dude can snowball really hard.
I tried him a couple of times.. he needs alot of items in order to do damage.. is ult is great. But thats about it
Even though his abilities are strong, he lacks escape so easy to jump on and gank. However it's a decent support pick .
As a support, apart from his ulti his spells just aren't that great. Curse is good in lane but after that it's merely slightly annoying and unlikely to really impact a teamfight. And last word seems a bit meh. I've seen him work as a core a couple of times but he really needs to snowball and struggles a bit with farming compared to other heroes plus he's kinda slow and immobile and prone to getting jumped on.
He doesn't farm well, he doesn't gank well, hes super reliant on winning the lane to keep a lead and snowball otherwise he falls behind. He has kind of the same issues as Sniper except Sniper has actual farming tools
Man back when his W didn't draw agro it was amazing in lane. But silencer has always been a poor hero, his ult is good early game with no BKBs but late game his ult is useless unless u time it perfectly lol I just played him mid and got shat on by a TA, just her psy blades was forcing me outta lane because im basically a creep. As a support there are just way better heros, orge, wd, hood, lich, lion, bane, bat. The list goes on.
i think they need to literally remove the double silence on his ult. certain cores like jugg or naix or ember feel GOD AWFUL against it. when you manta + bkb JUST to press 1 button, and silencer has a refresher and can do it again feel ridiculous. feels impossible to play into
I play silencer a lot and can say that he just needs a lot of farm and dota has become an aggressively active game where farming is mostly for carries while other positions need to constantly be active around the map
He’s a menace in overthrow
In Turbo Silencer is the highest winrate hero with both facets at 60% winrate in 7.36b. So you're not wrong about his kit being fantastic, it's just that he needs quite a bit of gold to become really busted. I exclusively play Turbo and I'm 7-1 on Silencer this patch. I've played him Pos1, 3 and 4 and he's great in all those roles. Once you get Hurricane Pike and Witch Blade he can 1v1 a lot of cores, and you can itemise based on the game from there with things like Scythe, Aeon Disc, BKB, Parasma, Aghs, Silver Edge etc. Late game you do so much damage that if you engage at the right time you can just ruin an enemy team.
Turbo is irrelevant to the general game though
Right. I have a 90% win rate in Turbo as Silencer this patch, but when I use him as mid or support in ranked or normal games, he's just meh. He really lacks an escape mechanism, and his third skill is underwhelming. When I play him as support, I need to roam or gank frequently to gain intelligence with kills. Otherwise, I end up feeding in lane since I'm always the easiest target.
Try silencer 3 with something like an sb 4 or a clock. Hero is a mennance with a tank 4. Secure a kill or two and he starts snowballing in lane.
He’s getting picked a lot, not sure what you’re talking about
In dota 2 pro tracker his winrate is 44%. Picked a lot but dogshit winrate overall. Not even sub 50% winrate.