How to pick a top-tier team
By Dormio
-INTRODUCTION-Tired of being crushed by a team that just steamrolls all over you in every engagement?
Can't gank? Can't farm? Can't harass? Just finding certain aspects of your team to be lacking?
Well worry not! For I have a guide for you to make a team that you can use to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies.
All you need to do is pick your heroes according to my guide and (provided you and your team don't suck balls) you will win
every game.
-CHARACTERS-So first, let's go over the character pool that you'll be looking at.
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | Sanae | Reimu |  | Youmu | Yuyuko | Ran | Medicine | Tenshi(?) | Satori | Yuugi | Suika | Meiling(?) |
But, Dormio, not every character here is a carry! How am I supposed to win without 5 carries on my team?!
Well, my adorable little (noob) friend, the characters that aren't carries exist to do one thing: Make the carry's life as easy as possible. Because unsupported carries tend to go *squish*. Quite often.
If you are a support, you just want to wreak havoc upon the enemy team by disabling them or buffing your own while your carry goes and destroys the very souls of the entire enemy team.
If you are a tank, you just want to wreak havoc upon the enemy team by disabling them or buffing your own while your carry goes and destroys the very souls of the entire enemy team.
If you are a situational hero, you just want to wreak havoc upon the enemy team by disabling them or buffing your own while your carry goes and destroys the very souls of the entire enemy team.
-CHARACTERS EXPANDED-So what is it that makes each of these characters a top tier pick?
Well, let's go through these characters.
Suwako Moriya. Have you seen what this hero does? Do you really need to question why she belongs here? What is it that a support does? Disable the enemy team or help the rest of your team to survive. Well Suwako is in no way or form lacking in the first. Her first skill is an AoE disable centered around herself
that cannot be cleansed due be being comprised of a series of ministuns. You may say: "But you need to get close to use this skill!" Do you know what I say to you in response? "What the f**k are you talking about?" Let me present three things to the non-believers. First, Suwako's ridiculous stat growths. You have enough HP to soak up that damage. Secondly, your second skill. You gain 80ms on top of being invulnerable for two seconds. If you can't get in position with that, God have mercy on your soul. Thirdly, your ultimate skill. You need the initiative? You just pop that ult and run in. Suwako's second skill is also a very good skill. It allows you to escape from any sticky situation, or you can just use it to get into the middle of the enemy team. Did I mention that it increases your movement speed while you're using it? And that you're invulnerable during its duration? Also, it deals damage. Your third skill is a simple mana shield. Considering Suwako's high STR and INT growths, you're going to be tanky as hell with your shield on. And finally, your ultimate which is
a stun on every enemy hero for 1.5 seconds that also damages them. Need a teamfight? Just pop this ult and you're good to go. Need a gank? Just pop this ult and you're good to go. Need to run? Just pop this ult and you're good to go. Its cooldown has been increased from the ridiculously short amount that it used to have, but not to worry. There's an item that reduces cooldowns by a fairly significant amount. This item also increases pure HP and MP. I wonder if that would synergize well with her mana shield? A question for the ages. An argument about how Suwako could be easily shut down due to her being melee and therefore unable to get any farm is also absolute rubbish. I present to you, Suwako's innate skill. Suwako tosses a ring that deals 22+(
2.22xINT) damage in a line. Easy last hitting, no? As if this is not bad enough, this ring also returns 22% of the damage it deals to Suwako's HP and Mana. And costs 2 MP to cast. And is on a 2.22 second cooldown. Anyway, yes, Suwako is a top tier pick.
Nazrin. Among the top tier carries, Nazrin requires more farm than most carries before she can really start destroying the enemy team 1v5. Fortunately for Nazrin, she has all the options in the world to help her get this farm. Your pendulums are a buff that you can cast on yourself or any ally. These pendulums will increase your armor, magic resistance and deal damage to everyone around them. In other words, you're looking at easy farm if you cast it onto one of your melee creeps. All you need to do is sit back and watch the money roll into your pockets. "What about point items? Won't the enemy be getting all of those?" You may ask. Well, you could always take a risk and go closer to the enemy to pick these up, but why bother when you have your kickass passive to do that for you? That little mouse that follows you around? It'll go and pick all those point items up for you, isn't it nice? On top of that, if you're managing your mana properly, your opponent shouldn't want to go close to the creepwave to pick up those point items since you'll be getting free damage on them due to the pendulums. Harass
and farm! Your double attack passive may seem unimpressive at first, what's the point? What you need to keep in mind is that your extra attack will carry any on-hit effects that your regular attacks do. Manaburn? Double manaburn. Bash procs? Say hello to permastun. Camera damage? Doubled. Not to mention the extra damage output that it gives is also nice. Nazrin's third skill may seem equally unimpressive. A short dash that takes up a fair amount of your low mana pool. Important thing to note? It's on a
4 second cooldown. Unless they have an escape mechanism of their own, nobody is going to get away from you. Nor will they be able to catch up to and kill you if you happen to need to run. Now, finally, your ultimate skill: Gold Rush. As the name may suggest, it's going to help your farm immensely and turns you into a powerful ganker. What this ultimate does is place a marker on your target. If you attack this target, your first attack will deal additional magic and stun them for 1.5 seconds. The fun part?
This applies for every ally. That means that, if you happen to be focussing one target down with your entire team, you can deal an extra 1000(+5xINT) magical damage and stun them for up to 7.5 seconds just by having everyone on your team attack them once. Oh, and you get bonus gold if the target dies. Which they will. Nazrin may not have as many steroids to buff up her damage as much as some of the other carries, but she can easily make up for it and quite possibly surpass the others with the ridiculous farm she can get.
Minoriko Aki.
Merlin Prismriver. There are two things that Merlin can offer that set her apart from the other tanks. These are her taunt, and her ridiculous HP regen
which is also applied to all nearby allies. Merlin's first skill, the taunt, is ridiculously good for catching any enemy heroes out of position. Whatever you hit with this skill will run towards you with all their might for 2.2 seconds. Now, one thing to note is that the fastest people in this game happen to be the deliciously squishy carries. So if you were to force the enemy carry to run towards your team... I'm sure that you can envision the scene that follows. In addition, this skill is on a very short cooldown, so you can disable with frightening ease. Merlin's second skill is rather lackluster. It exchanges survivability for additional damage output and movement speed. You'll probably be wanting to use this for the movement speed burst to confirm kills or to buff up your carry if you feel that they can take the loss in survivability. An alternate use if you have slows and/or stuns to follow up with is to use it on enemies that are locked down so that they take additional damage. Merlin's third skill is a passive ability that increases her HP regeneration depending on the amount of HP she is missing. Not only does this give you much more effective HP due to the increased regeneration,
the fact that your entire team can also get this regeneration is a godsend. Finally, Merlin's ultimate skill. What this ability does is link Merlin's HP to an enemy hero. For every point of damage damage you take, you'll return 1.2 points of damage to your target. Hey, if the enemy team is going to focus the tank, you might as well punish them that much more for it, right? All in all, it is mostly Merlin's taunt that puts her above the other tanks.
Hina Kagiyama.
Hatate Himekaidou. Hatate doesn't offer much to her team other than damage, but Hatate's damage output is nothing to be scoffed at. With one of the best attack speed steroids in the game, extra pure damage on attacks, and high maneuverability, Hatate will find and kill all of her foes if left to her own devices. Hatate's first skill allows her to instantly blink large distances on a fairly short cooldown. This can be used to chase and confirm kills, or escape from sticky situations. On top of being a very good blink, this skill also passively increases Hatate's movement speed. Gotta go fast! Hatate's second skill acts as both a rather damaging nuke and a buff to her damage. On top of dealing 300% of your damage in an AoE, it will mark every enemy it hits with a debuff that both gives vision to Hatate and makes every attack that Hatate performs on that enemy deal an additional 44 damage. Did I mention that this bonus damage is
pure? In conjunction with Hatate's third skill, you're in for a world of hurt. Speaking of which, Hatate's third skill is a self targeted buff that will increase her attack speed by a ridiculous amount for 5 seconds. Now, considering that each of Hatate's autoattacks are going to be dealing 44 bonus pure damage, and that Hatate is going to be attacking extremely quickly, her target had best hope that they have some quick means of escaping or disabling Hatate, else they will see their HP become non-existant. Hatate's ultimate skill is literal maphax. It allows her to see every enemy hero for 7 seconds. Yes, even the invisible ones. On top of all this, Hatate also has an extra skill, one that allows her to teleport back to the fountain after channelling for 3 seconds. The kicker?
Hatate is invulnerable while channelling this teleport. Yep. This is her "get out of jail free" card. It allows her to escape from every situation. Hatate most definitely deserves her spot amongst the top tier carries.
Tewi Inaba. There are two main things that set Tewi apart from the other top tier carries: her orb, and her ultimate. Tewi has nowhere near the amount of attack steroids that the other top tier carries have, but she does not need them to excel. Tewi's traps are extremely annoying to deal with. If Tewi happens to have map control, and you run into one of them whilst trying to flee with your life, you can kiss any hope of escape goodbye. These traps will detonate whenever any enemy gets within range and deal damage and stun them. These traps may be rather obvious, but there is one problem.
There is no way to remove these traps without either detonating them or waiting for them to time out. If a Tewi manages to lay traps in key locations, then every gank and escape option becomes unavailable for the enemy team. Secondly, Tewi's orb. Having this thing is like having a free camera. Actually, it's better than a camera. 5% of an enemy's max HP in bonus damage is a rather significant amount. That's 6000 gold that you don't need to invest whilst other top tier carries do. On top of that, this orb acts as a basher. That's another 3000 gold that you've saved. Suddenly, you are 9000 gold up in farm compared to other carries. Tewi's third skill is for those that don't understand the concept of animation cancelling. Well, I suppose that the -armor is nice. Finally, Tewi's ultimate skill. This thing is very annoying for the enemy team to deal with. Every one of Tewi's allies becomes a tank when they are standing around her. If an actual tank is standing around Tewi, they become God in loli form. Tewi is special in that her kit does not actually encourage building the same items that the other top tier carries would. Instead, what Tewi wants is pure attack speed and survivability. Tewi offers much more than just damage (which she does not lack in any way or form) to the team and is therefore a top tier pick.
Momiji Inubashiri. Momiji's kit is close to any carry's dream. She has a skill that lets her farm with ease, a very long single target stun that can be used to obliterate any enemy that is caught out, global maphax so that she can either catch people out or watch for incoming ganks, and an aura that improves the movement and attack speed of herself and all her allies. Sure, Momiji lacks attack steriods that are on the level of Youmu and the like, but the safety with which she can farm and gank more than make up for it, though she will eventually lose out to the other top tier carries if the game drags out into the late game. Momiji's first skill is what allows her to farm with such ease. Momiji summons two incredibly tanky wolves which also have fairly decent damage. These are used as meatshields while Momiji farms the jungle. The fact that Momiji jungles also instills a sense of fear into the enemy team. If they push out too far, a Momiji could be waiting to jump them at any moment. Momiji's second skill, on top of giving
aerial truesight over a large AoE for 8 seconds on a 15 second cooldown also passively increases the damage of Momiji and her wolves. Momiji's third skill is a melee range stun that lasts for 2.8 seconds, more than enough time for Momiji and her wolves to rip apart the life bars of any heroes unfortunate enough to be caught out. Finally, Momiji's ultimate skill is an aura that increases both movement speed and attack speed by 30%. Sure, it isn't as big of a steroid as those that the other top tier carries have, but it's still a great buff that is always active and also benefits your wolves. Oh, and Momiji doesn't need to bother buying crit. She and her wolves are given a crit as an innate ability. Momiji is one of the fastest(only) junglers in the game, and her ability to gank, push, and carry should not be underestimated by any means.
Letty Whiterock. Letty is capable of demolishing enemy formations with ease. By simply throwing some hail onto her foes, they are forced to back off, spread out, or take a large amount of damage. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what Letty is capable of. Letty's first skill is a channelled AoE nuke that deals damage over time. It has an extremely large AoE on top of an extremely last cast range, allowing you to launch a frozen barrage on whatever foes you may see with no fear of any repercussions coming your way. Letty's second skill can wreak havoc on an enemy team during a teamfight, or simply be used as an escape or chasing mechanism. What this skill does is launch four large snowballs around Letty which are each capable of dealing damage and stunning up to two targets for 2.2 seconds. If Letty is able to get in the middle of the enemy team and use this ability, she has basically stunned the entire enemy team. Letty's third skill is a passive ability that makes Letty to be such an annoying presence. Not only does it increase Letty's maximum HP, making her harder to focus down and kill, and increase the damage that she deals with her blizzard, it causes Letty's blizzard to slow everything it hits in addition to dealing damage. On top of all this, Letty has her ultimate skill that creates a large patch of frost. All enemies within this frost will have both their movement speed and attack speed reduced by a significant amount, giving your team a clear advantage in any fight that breaks out. In addition, the slow can be used simply to flee if necessary. Letty can disrupt teams like no other and is easily amongst the best supports that DotS has to offer.
Cirno. Whilst Cirno may not gain any INT, she more than makes up for it with extremely high STR and AGI growths.
Aya Shameimaru. Aya is similar to Hatate in that the only thing that she offers to a team is pure damage output. Aya is similar to Hatate in that she is not left wanting when it comes to her sole purpose. If Aya has her sights set on anyone, that person is not leaving unless Aya allows them to. With both a high range dash and an unholy number of blinks, nobody can hope to escape from or catch Aya. On top of this, Aya gains additional movement speed according to her level up to a maximum of +200 base movement speed at level 20. Good luck keeping up with that. So, Aya's first skill. It's a long range dash that also does a significant amount of damage. It also happens to be on a fairly short cooldown. It can easily get Aya in and out of a fight. 'Nuff said. Aya's second skill marks a target with a debuff that gives Aya vision of the target. The important part, however, is the ridiculous amounts of additional
pure damage that she gets whenever she attacks an enemy that has been marked. As if the bonus pure damage weren't enough, Aya's third skill is a proc that, whenever it is activated, deals large amounts of damage and slows the target and everything around it by 30% for 2.5 seconds. Finally, Aya's ultimate skill is a rather strange one. Rather than buffing any damaging aspect of Aya,
it turns every single action Aya makes into a blink. This skill allows Aya to catch up to or run away from anything and everything. What other carry, or any character in the game really, can boast having the same level of mobility that Aya has?
Nue Houjuu. Nue is a hero that has the capacity to dominate the entire enemy team if in the hands of a skilled player. However, it is equally likely that Nue will end up contributing absolutely nothing of worth to a team. Nue relies entirely on getting an early lead and snowballing
Sanae Kochiya.
Reimu Hakurei.
Shikieiki Yamaxanadu. Shikieiki is a hero with a rather ridiculous laning phase, especially in a 1v1 situation. Of course, this doesn't mean that Shikieiki's strength peters out once the laning phase ends, nor does it mean that she has trouble in a 1v2 or 2v2 lane. Shikieiki has one of, if not
the, fastest attack animations and projectiles in the game. On top of being able to last hit with ease, Shikieiki is also capable of harassing the enemy with little to no risk. Her first skill is one that places a guilt marker on the enemy, as well as a debuff that will cause them to lose a percentage of their
maximum HP every time they kill anything for 15 seconds. Note that whilst it lasts for 15 seconds, it has a 4 second cooldown. Shikieiki's second skill can be used as either a powerful nuke and stun or a heal. This skill will always deal a minimum of 18% of the target's
maximum HP as well as stunning them for 2.2 seconds. As if that weren't bad enough, this nuke will deal an
additional 6% of the target's maximum HP in damage for every guilt marker that the target has up to a maximum of 60% of the target's maximum HP with 10 markers. On top of this, this skill passively gives Shikieiki additional attack speed when attacking targets marked with guilt. This is important for her third skill, which gives Shikieiki bonus
pure damage on every attack. On top of this, if Shikieiki attacks the same target enough times, she will deal additional pure damage and give her target an additional guilt marker. Finally, Shikieiki's ultimate skill purges and creates a clone of an enemy hero.
This clone deals 100% damage and does not take damage from enemy attacks. Instead, if the enemy team wishes to destroy this clone, the target is forced to take damage as the clone's HP is tied only to the original's. With a powerful nuking, supporting, and carrying abilities, Shikieiki is a solid addition to any team.
Youmu Konpaku.
Yuyuko Saigyouji.
Ran Yakumo.
Medicine Melancholy.
Tenshi Hinanawi.
Satori Komeiji.
Yuugi Hoshiguma.
Suika Ibuki.
Hong Meiling.
-Will Edit In-
-CATEGORIES-Every character does
not play the same role in a team.
Instead, they can usually be divided into one of 4 categories: Carry, Support, Tank, Situational
The following have been organized from highest -> lowest tier.
Note that tiering cannot be applied to the situational picks due to the high variance in roles amongst them.
Also note that, even though I may have tiered them amongst each other, remember that all of these heroes are still top tier picks for what they do.
-CARRIES--SUPPORTS--TANKS- | | Yuugi | Meiling(?) |
-SITUATIONAL- | | Medicine | Yuyuko | Satori |
| Suika |
-PICKS-Actually picking the heroes is rather formulaic. Just make sure that you have the following, and you're set.
- 2~4 Supports
- 1~2 Carries
- 0~1 Tanks
- 0~1 Situational
Team synergy is rather important, though. Some combinations obviously work better than others and I shall try to list a few combinations here.
-Will Edit Later-
-ADVANCED PICKS-If you actually need to read this guide to get a grasp on what a good team should look like, then this section is
not for you. Noob.
These are teams based on specific gimmicks and require a large amount of skill and/or luck to properly coordinate and pull off.
-Cold Nuclear Fusion- | | Utsuho | Reimu | Sanae |
Notes: The reasoning behind Reimu and Sanae picks is purely to prevent the enemy team from counterpicking you. Not to mention that the two are solid picks in general. If you feel that you can get these heroes safely without having a Reimu and/or Sanae counterpick from the enemy team, then feel free to tack a different hero onto your lineup to replace one of the maidens.
-When in Roam- | Tenshi | Medicine | Meiling | Sanae |
Notes: Your sole purpose is to pick up kills wherever you can find them. You want to destroy a lane and push quickly while they're confused by the sheer stupidity of this strategy. Countered by: Wards, Map awareness.
-Spin to Win- | | Meiling | Ran | Medicine |
Notes: This team is quite a solid team on its own, but teamfights will be where it truly shines. You need to be careful about having Reimu or Sanae negate your teamfight, though.
-I See Dead People-Notes: To utilize your full potential, your team will require extremely high levels of coordination. Use Hatate's ultimate to scout out enemy locations. If Nue launches an UFO, Eirin should fire off her arrow to where the UFO will land to make the 1v1 a piece of cake for Nue. If necessary, Tenshi can confirm kills with her ultimate skill, but it is preferable to have it used for damage due to how Nue works. Suwako is there to help out the gank if need be, or for Nue's escape after the gank is complete. Make the enemy team fear you, no matter where they are on the map.
-Push strat (insert witty name here)- | Yuyuko | Rin |  | Utsuho |
Notes: As evident from the lineup, your aim is to win as fast as possible with the help of tower gold. You'll likely be stopped by any competent team due to the new tower and creep mechanics.
-Will Edit In-
