LogFAQs > #962796727

96 - Lycan (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/9/3/AAAACbAAC8nx.jpg
Basic Abilities: Summon Wolves, Howl, Feral Impulse, Shapeshift
Shard Ability: Improves Summon Wolves to randomly spawn an uncontrollable wolf during every creepwave that travels with them. These wolves will give Lycan money if they last hit, and have the same Cripple ability level 4 summoned wolves do (8 DPS/60% attack speed slow for 4 seconds) except this can hit towers.
Scepter Ability: New ability "Wolf Bite" which, when cast, applies Shapeshift to an ally. Lycan and this ally gain 30% lifesteal, and will heal each other with this lifesteal if Lycan is within a moderate distance of the bitten ally.

"Lycan worst hero" was a common joke on an older forum I frequented, and I legitimately believed it once upon a time; of course, some of his moderate jump in rankings probably comes from Helm of the Overlord at the expense of Necronomicon - though I suppose a game that somehow got to 60:00 tier 5 neutral items, one of which summons three sets of the bastards, is an auto-win, but if a Lycan didn't end the game by that point, he's probably doing something wrong. But I digress.

Anyways, Lycan! He's another autoattacker melee, but with more of a focus on jungling, pushing, and ganking, rather than being a straight teamfighter carry. He's slightly micro reliant, as Summon Wolves, despite Lycan's voice line boasting, need some armor to not immediately get focused down; almost all of his early game revolves around kiting them around and buffing them up with auras, debuffing attackers with Howl, and taking advantage of Feral Impulse's nutty regeneration buff when maxed out.

Once Lycan hits level 6, the fun begins. Shapeshift gives a whole slew of buffs while active - extra night vision, maximum movespeed, critical strike chance, and bonus health, and most importantly, slow immunity... to ALL units under Lycan's control. Helm of the Dominator is a huge pickup for him, which synergizes quite well with Lycan usually farming a Vladimir's Offering, another potent item that gives Lycan and his units basically everything he wants. From there, it's a matter of preference on the next item choice. BKB is a common pickup since, despite slow immunity, stuns and disarms will wreck his day in Shapeshift.

Despite fun interactions between Lycan and his units, plus synergies that arise from Wolves (both summoned and shard-spawned) getting to benefit from Howl, I've mostly got Lycan this low because of quibbles of how summoned wolves target things. Shift+Queueing attack commands have to be unit-targeted with them, since maintaining their invisibility will take priority over a queued attack-move command. His build, despite a bunch of autoattack-buff items, is also fairly inflexible: Max wolves, value point of howl early, max Feral Impulse, Shapeshift when available. Talent for wolf damage and buy shard after 20:00 for free pushing power, talent for Feral Impulse to cause Lycan+unit's bonus damage to grow to 69% at max level (Nice.) Watch for a teamfight to break out and delete a tower, then scurry away, or run invisible wolves at the backline to Howl and nom on a support while you chase down a low-health hero. Start joining teamfights after BKB and eat face. Try not to fall asleep. Send dominated Ancient from Helm of the Overlord at enemy base. Still try not to fall asleep. Buy a scepter and bite your Marci or Ursa. Oh no.

Fun fact, Lycan's my highest win rate hero in Dota 2 (with more than 10 games, because I have 100% WR with Magnus and Arc Warden both,) but if I wanted to zip around at sonic speed all the time, I'd play Dark Seer and look the part. At least with Seer I have some nuke capability - Lycan's offense gets neutered by the simple of expedience of "become un-hittable" items, and counterpicked badly by anything that can burst down wolves through physical or pure damage, or are able to completely ignore physical damage, or able to protect buildings before shard, or deal most of their damage through bonus attack damage instead of stats so Howl doesn't affect it as hard, or using a long lockdown ultimate on him like Fiend's Grip, or... huh, that's a lot of niche situationals. Y'know, maybe I should play Lycan a bit more. Maybe if the jungle gets buffed again. Lord knows he causes a saltstorm when he wins.

Next hero hint: someone who ironically gets absolutely dumpstered by Lycan, that is similarly useful in jungle situations, and one of my favorite heroes but is, y'know, a jungler in 2022.