Image by Welkynd
A few weeks ago when we were doing one of our top level posts, we sighed with relief that while many cheese heroes are in the meta right now, Broodmother is not. Well, someone had to go ahead and please the hero and here we are. Broodmother – another very powerful cheese choice to destroy bars.
The header statement is somewhat true for most Universal heroes who reach and want to right click their opponents. Because of the way most defensive and utility items are built, Universal heroes can have both survivability and DPS for the later parts of the game.
Because of it, the current meta is heavily focused on universals and we wouldn’t be surprised if 0.7 damage per stat will return to 0.6 in the future. It’s not particularly healthy for the game to have many heroes hitting for 300+ damage per attack while having very high survivability and utility.
Additionally, because the current meta revolves around Universal heroes, their complements and counters are also trending. Heroes like Magnus can boost the damage of the already ridiculous base of Universal heroes with Empower, while on the flip side we have heroes like
Underlord and
Timbersaw, which manage to cut universal enemy stats and their DPS. It is also one of the reasons why
Scepter of Aghanim
Morphling is gaining popularity.
Broodmother is a Universal hero and as such she is similarly broken by default. It took players a little longer to figure this out.
Broodmother starts the game extremely weak and her base damage and base HP are well below average. Her strength gain is also very low, making her a surprisingly tame opponent in lane initially.
However, like most Universal heroes, she can be bought Bracers and
Wraith Bands to make sure she survives during the start of the game. Between the extra stats and Armor, she can go from a squishy spider to an arachnophobia-inducing nightmare in just a few minutes, and it’s important not to miss this metamorphosis when you jump against her.
Players should understand that Broomother takes 4.3 Base Damage per level, 2.4 AS per level and even a simple Magic Wand gives her +6 attack damage. She also has the highest base attack speed in the game and most of our readers should be aware that it is just as important as attack damage when calculating DPS.
If you’re trading with Broodmother in lane come level five, with only a few trinkets, she’ll probably have an advantage in a fair 1v1 unless you play heroes like ursa,
Troll warlord or
monkey king This is without a doubt the most broken skill in her kit.
What are you doing ursa,
monkey king,
Magnus and even
Do they have bloodthirsty in common? Well, they are pretty strong late game DPS characters with powerful buffs. They are also the best candidates to build
Canceling against and are part of the reason
Shadow Demon is so popular right now. Continuous disintegration effects can completely destroy the DPS of these heroes, as they rely heavily on buffs to deal damage.
Even simple disbands can be somewhat problematic to play for these characters, and the best players and teams know and abuse this fact. If you look at the professional meta, there is a sharp rise in popularity for Shadow Demon and Oracle, while Enchantress is still a hotly contested pick. What does it have to do with it? Breast mother? Well, for several reasons Insatiable hunger it is an inexplicable buffalo.
It’s basically a transformative ability, just like of Sven God’s strength OR
Terrorblade metamorphoses. The only difference is that it has a ridiculous 56% uptime (64% with Shard) and a relatively low cooldown. It is not a skill that the enemy takes to “wait” and “play away”.
This ability provides +70% base attack damage, which, as previously discussed, is absolutely massive for a Universal hero. She also gives 100% lifesteal to the hero, as if she lacked support. And later it can even reduce Broodmother’s BAT to 1.4, making it comparable to Juggernaut in terms of attack speed.
The hero becomes extremely damaging to the enemy while potentially building a full inventory of survival items and farming a good portion of the map with her Spiderlings. Top players also block enemy camp spawns with their Spiderites unless they intend to farm them.
The end result is pretty straightforward. Broodmother is another broken Universal hero that requires a bit of micro, but isn’t too difficult to use effectively. Her win rate is increasing rapidly in most skill sets as more and more players realize that she can be played in a very weird way without making her any less of a DPS threat.
The most popular and successful build for the hero involves getting Harpoon and
Manta Style, in
Black King Bar or
Linken Sphere as needed.
To deal with him, we’d strongly suggest picking supports with AoE slows that won’t die from the Spiderling’s attack. Heroes like Lich and
Ancient Apparition are good enough to survive and turn on the hero since then
Orchid Malevolence ceased to be a priority for Broodmother.
Essentially, most illusion-based heroes should be fine, but there’s also a case to be made in favor of Troll Warlord who surprisingly doesn’t suffer from Cancels and manages to keep his DPS intact while having comparable lifesteal and dazzle options with the ultimate and Rotary axes respectively.
What are your thoughts on this new development and do you want to give Broodmother a try? Share your thoughts and maybe your frustrations in the comments section below.