Favourite DOTA Strategy - Dirge Undying

	Dirge - Undying Range: 100 | Move Speed: 310 Primary: INT Str: 25 + 2.1 | Agi: 10 + 0.8 | Int: 27 + 2.8 Damage: 59 - 67 | HP: 625 | Mana: 351 HP Regen: | Mana Regen: Attack Speed: | Armor: 2
	Raise Dead (D) Calls the Undying's fellow zombies out of the earth to fight. Once a zombie attacks six times, another one will rise alongside it. When a zombie dies, its reanimating life force returns to Dirge, healing him by 50 hp. Lasts 30 seconds. Level 1 - 1 Zombie Level 2 - 2 Zombies Level 3 - 3 Zombies Level 4 - 4 Zombies Mana Cost: 100/120/140/160 Cooldown: 30 Comment: This skill is multi-purpose, with this you can farm (really well), attack in combination with Soul Rip, and harass your enemy, also lets you stay in the lane for a very long time.
	Soul Rip (R) Redirects the flow of living energy through a target friend or foe, damaging them or healing them depending on how many unites are near it. Level 1 - 5 max Level 2 - 10 max Level 3 - 15 max Level 4 - 20 max Mana Cost: 50/75/100/125 Cooldown: 30 Comment: Two ways to use this skill, first to attack an enemy when there are lots of creeps near him and second to heal an ally or yourself.
	Heartstopper Aura (T) The Dirge's deathly air stills the hearts of his opponents, causing them to lose 1% of their max health over time. Level 1 - 250 AoE Level 2 - 500 AoE Level 3 - 750 AoE Level 4 - 1000 AoE Mana Cost: Cooldown: Comment: With this skill heroes will stay away from you, I max this out so soon to harass them without any effort and make them go back to fountain eventually.
	Plague (E) Infects the target with a plague. Reduces movement speed by 30% and amplifies incoming damage. Infects other units that come within range of a plagued unit. Level 1 - 25% Extra Damage Level 2 - 30% Extra Damage Level 3 - 35% Extra Damage Mana Cost: 100/125/150 Cooldown: 45 Comment: Great for ganking heroes, the slow and the extra damage will destroy your enemies, the low cooldown makes it even better. Skill Build: 1. Raise Dead 2. Heartstopper Aura 3. Heartstopper Aura 4. Raise Dead 5. Heartstopper Aura 6. Plague 7. Heartstopper Aura 8. Soul Rip 9. Raise Dead 10. Raise Dead 11. Plague 12. Soul Rip 13. Soul Rip 14. Soul Rip 15. Stats 16. Plague 17. Stats 18. Stats 19. Stats 20. Stats 21. Stats 22. Stats 23. Stats 24. Stats 25. Stats Item Build: 1. Sobi Mask (325) +50% Mana Regeneration. More mana regen. 2. Ring of Basilius (500) +6 Damage Passive: Brilliance Aura 900 Radius +0.65 mana/ second to friendly units Passive: Devotion Aura 900 Radius +3 Armor Does not stack with Crystal Maiden's Brilliance Aura, but stack with Sven's Devotion Aura. Active: Toggle Devotion Aura Turns the passive: Devotional Aura on and off as desired. Ring of Protection + Sobi Mask With this and Sobi Mask you have enough mana regen for the entire game. 3. Radiance (5325) +8% Chance to Evade +70 Damage Passive: Immolation 400 Radius 35 Damage/sec Immolation Sacred Relic + Radiance Recipe Scroll I’m not crazy, you can farm this in about 20 minutes and it will make you deadly, great damage and stacks with your aura. 4. Boots of Travel (2700) +90 Run Speed Active: Teleport 60 Second Cooldown 3 Second Cast Time Boots of Speed + Boots of Travel Recipe Scroll Lets you teleport across the map and helps in chases. 5. Eye of Skadi (7050) +200 Hit Points, +150 Mana +25 to All Attributes Passive: Frost Attack -20% Attack Speed -30% Run Speed 2 Second Duration for ranged heroes, 3 seconds for melee heroes Melee Eye of Skadi is an orb effect, and does not stack with orb effects; Ranged Eye of Skadi is NOT an orb effect, and stacks with some orb effects. Ultimate Orb + Ultimate Orb + Point Booster + Eye of Skadi Recipe Scroll Plague + Radiance + bot + Skadi you will chase and kill a lot. Also gives more HP and mana. 6. Hyperstone (2100) 55% increased attack speed Very hard to come this far, but this makes you attack at a decent speed, fell free to upgrade do Assault Cuirass. Early Game: Welcome to my Dirge guide, this is my first guide in dota strategy (has someone heard this already?) so go easy on me. Dirge is a hero that doesn't appear to have any chance in battle, in the games I play my enemies always underestimate me and end up dying, I will try to show you how to use Dirge to his maximum potential. Skill Build: All Dirge skills have great synergy with the others, Raise Dead helps you stay in the lane a long time and improves the use of Soul Rip, Heartstopper Aura makes your enemy suffer while you are healed from your zombies and keep a distance from the enemy, and Plague increases your damage, damage of your zombies and the Soul Rip damage as well as your allies damage, does it sound good enough for you? The skill build focuses on farming and harassing your enemy, for this reason I focus on Heartstopper Aura first, only two levels of Raise Dead is enough in the early game, otherwise you will push the first tower too soon and you won't farm enough, as well as increasing the chance of ganks against you, plague is always good for ganking and trying to get a kill, and Soul Rip helps in finishing heroes. Item Build: Early game the build focuses on making sure your enemies don't get too close to you and staying in the lane, as I will teach you in about 20 minutes you can farm radiance and start farming even more, you will also gain the ability to chase enemies, with boots of travel you can stop any creep wave with Raise dead and Radiance as well as help in ganks, with Skadi you will have lots of intelligence and strength and a second slow to combine with plague, with this more ganks. Note that after these items and your high level you will have a lot of damage, be able to tank, and with Dirge's great intelligence gain, you can fight well, so the only thing you do not have is attack speed, with Hyperstone you solve this issue, and you're ready to fight. Early Game: Early game your priority is to farm as much as you can and harass your enemy without any effort as I will demonstrate, first thing to do is buy a Sobi mask, if you have more gold buy another, that’s enough mana regeneration for the entire game unless you spam spells all the time. Ideally you should solo for more farming, but your team probably won’t let you do it because Dirge is a "weak hero", the best lanes for you are bot for the Sentinel and top for the Scourge because your enemies will use their tower less to defend letting you farm more, the mid lane is good for harassing with Heartstopper Aura but you will lack in farming. With a lane partner you can heal with Soul Rip and get some kills with plague, consider this, 20-30% extra damage, as if magic attacks didn’t have any reduction, the dream of all nukers comes true, so if you lane with someone, lane with a nuker. Lane Situations: VS 1 Melee The perfect situation, unless your enemy is carrying a lot of healing items he will die or go back to the fountain, the first thing to do is try to always keep him in Heartstopper Aura's range so he will suffer loss of HP, consider that it’s 1% per second, if you stay in the lane 5 minutes it will be 300 seconds that can kill 3 times, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a Centaur or a Sniper the pain will be the same. Remember to use your Zombies so the enemy will not try to go after you because you have bodyguards. Vs 2 Melee You should proceed the same way as above but be more careful, try to have the two enemies in your aura, don’t be too aggressive if they have some nukes like storm bolt. Vs 1 Ranged Here you need to wait for higher levels of Heartstopper Aura before you start harassing your enemy, your farming still works, but be aware of heavy nukers and use Raise Dead to heal yourself, if you are under heavy bombardment use your zombies to harass him. Vs 2 Ranged You’re in trouble here, if no one wants a lane change, or no one comes to help you, stay behind your creeps and only farm, use the aura only at level 3 or 4 with caution. Vs 1 Ranged and 1 Melee A mix of strategies, harass the melee and be aware of the ranged hero, be defensive because of the nukes and farm. Now you may be asking "wtf" how will I farm in all these situations and be able to afford Radiance??? So here we go: Farming: Farming with Dirge is easy and can be done in most situations, first use Raise Dead and summon a zombie and order him to attack a creep if he doesn’t go automatically, done! What????? Yes, your zombies will attack all the creeps they see and will kill them most of the time, also they will multiply themselves giving even more last hits for you and more gold, the most important thing is DO NOT ATTACK THE CREEPS so that your zombies can multiply and give you even more gold and heal you, here is a sequence of farming a wave of creeps: Here I see a wave coming so I decided to summon my Zombies. Hey they kill the two creeps while I was far from them; no magic trick is used here. Hey they kill the third creep, am I with luck? NO, this happens most of the times. As you can see farming is really easy, when you have Raise Dead lv 4 you can kill neutrals, stronger neutrals (dragons, golems) and get even more gold. Harassing: As I mentioned in lane situations you can farm without any effort, all you have to do is keep the enemy in Heartstopper Aura and everything should be fine, keep an eye on the foot of enemy hero and see if they are affected by the aura. Here I was harassing Leviathan, look at his HP is half and I’m not very close to him. His HP became really low and he is trying to face the creeps. The big Guy goes to the bag and I didn’t even move a finger. Killing: Dirge isn’t able to kill lots of heroes, his function is to help the team to get lots of kills with Plague and Radiance, also he can push really well using Raise dead, but getting kills is possible, just harass your enemy with Heartstopper Aura, when his HP is low Raise Dead and Plague, then start to attack and get the kill. Here Tiny is with low HP because I was harassing him, so I decided to try for a kill and plagued him. Hey don’t run, I’m not even alive. The poor Giant died due to my aura. Pushing: DO NOT PUSH! Simple isn’t it? When the first tower of your lane goes down the early game is over, you should have something like this in your inventory: Or maybe even radiance or 3000 gold, if not, farm fast! Mid Game: Now your team will start to love you, try to always be in the ganks to plague the other heroes, at this time you should have at least sacred relic or radiance, if you have radiance the enemies will die without you even touching them. Remember to continue farming, now the best option is the lv 6 neutral creep, always keep an eye on the map to go where they are, when not ganking, farm or counter push, you can push as well but be careful, the enemies will now try to kill you because they have realized that you are a stone in their path, so try to stay with your allies when in dangerous positions on the map. Here you will farm boots of travel, with this you can help your team in most of the cases and easily chase the enemies that are plagued. Farming: Go for neutrals, the counter push is a good option too, the way to do it still works as told in early game, but now you should attack if the creeps are too many or too strong. Killing: Try to gank, if someone in your team has a slow it will be great to combine with Plague, remember to ONLY ATTACK AN ENEMY HERO AFTER USING PLAGUE, and better yet, with an ally, otherwise he will fight you and probably win. Here the poor Leviathan is running from a bad push, I already plagued him and my ally is with me. Easy kill with an ally near me. Pushing: You can now start pushing, use Raise Dead and order the zombies to attack the enemy creeps so they will multiply and can push the tower faster, remember to not attack the creeps and ask your allies to do the same, when you have enough zombies push the tower, you will probably earn the gold from the tower kill. At the end of the mid game you should have these items: Late Game: In late game you should farm less and push more, if you helped your team well, at this stage the enemies don’t have a chance. Your function here is to push and counter push, with travel you can take the responsibility of defending the base, in most of the games you won’t be completing Skadi because you team will have won before that. Your final inventory should be something like this: If the battle extends a lot: Itens to consider: With this and plague you can do 400 damage and some more if plague is at lv 3, the problem is that it’s not cheap and it doesn’t give a lot of stats. Zombies with more armor and life steal have a better chance to multiply, also helps your team, think of it if you wish a more defensive play. More HP and mana regen, with this you can stay longer in the lane. Damage and a good disable, if no one in the team gets it, it’s a good alternative. Upgrade from Hyper Stone if you have time. With this you have even more ways to heal, also helps your team. Good for pushing, the bonuses are also great. Good alies: Heroes with a Slow help a lot as well as stunners. Guys that can chase well are good allies too. Nukers + Plague deals the true damage of the spells. Everybody’s good allies also help you. Conclusion: Final considerations: Dirge isn’t a fun hero to play theoretically, but when the enemies run from the lane it gets fun, help your team as much as you can and own if possible. Special Thanks: To Goku, he saved the world lots of times. The guys that created and maintain dota. My family because in everything you do you must thank them even if you hate them (not my case). thiagota for correcting my English errors, my English really sucks. Everybody that will rate well this guide (low rates no thanks!).