Dota 2 Beastmaster Guide and Tips

Dota 2 Beastmaster Guide and Tips by llamadota

I’ve seen a few guides from high ranking players popping up in the last few months, and I’ve found them to really interesting and insightful. As such, I thought I’d make one for Beastmaster as I have played ALOT of the hero, around ~260 games with a 64% winrate (4.5k mmr). People have been saying that they find him a bit underwhelming, I think that they just have no idea how to play the hero correctly. Please forgive any formatting silliness, as I almost never make reddit posts. Please keep in mind that this is just my experience with the hero, and by no means the only way to play him. There are two ways I play BM: mid and solo offlane

Mid Start with 3 branches and 1 set of tangos, get of a good block and last hit as well as you can. Take 1st lvl of axes, and save this for getting at least two last hits while trying to hit the enemy mid as well. Go for bottle and treads as your first items, and skill for 3-2-0-1.

Use your pig to help you control runes; either leave it mid to slow the enemy hero so that you can get to runes first, OR pre-emptively send it to a rune spot while you run to the other one. This way you can fill your bottle, while using the boar to kill the other rune so that the enemy mid can’t refill. This way you can usually keep them on low hp so you can kill them once you hit 6. Use the pig in lane to harass the enemy hero as well, as it won’t aggro the creeps. If they come in to kill it, try to run in and get a hit or two on them while the slow is on them.

When you hit 6, it is usually fairly easy to kill the enemy mid hero if you haven’t been completely outlaned. Just make sure you have the boar summoned already, roar, whack away and throw axes and they should be dead if they are any regular mid hero. You might have to soften them up with an axe throw.

Once you hit level 7, focus on ganking and teamfighting whenever your ulti is up, and grabbing runes inbetween. Try and stack the jungle with your pig whenever you aren’t looking for a kill, and kill these stacks with axes. Remember that you can increase your jungling efficiency by throwing your axes at a far away camp, then running towards a second camp so that the axes hit the second camp on the way back. Always carry tp, your ulti is absolutely lethal under tower. Keep doing this and work towards your first big item: Necronomicon.

What? No blink? That’s right. Unless your team ABSOLUTELY requires a blink initiator, go for necro. Beastmasters aura and stun makes him synergise with necro better than any other hero in the game. If you can get necro 1 up by around 11-14 minutes, you can solo kill anyone in the game. Make sure you have your hotkeys set up that so you can control all units by holding down control (default) while right clicking, and you will find it super easy to kill anybody in your roar duration. After getting necro, you can be more flexible. Usually I will pick up a blink here, but often I will also go for sceptre as it reduces cd of your ult by a significant amount while increasing the range to a RIDICULOUS level. Seriously, until you try it, you won’t believe how much bigger it makes the range.

Solo Offlane Start with stout and tangoes + salve, build towards soul ring (skip bottle) while using your pig to stack ancients. When stacking, run your pig towards the rune spot and deny the rune if you mid can’t get to it and you are remaining in lane. Play safe and don’t die, use axes to get last hits. Don’t try and do ancients until you are lvl 7 (this will take about 90 seconds to do, make sure you use your pets to give you vision while you are doing this).

Individual skill tips and tricks

Wild axes The damage from this was recently changed from composite to physical, which means it is now affected much more by your targets armour. EDIT not correct, I was wrong about composite damage, however the point that you want to use this on low armour heroes is still the way to go. Early game, this skill will destroy low armour heroes, so try to save it for squishy targets as much as possible. Remember that this skill can also cut down trees, which can be used in a variety of way. I recently have had mixed success with buying medallion on beastmaster to synergise with this skill, and although it allows you to blow anyone up at lvl 6, I find that it slows down your building of necro by too much to be worthwhile.

Call of the wild This is beastmaster’s best skill, and why he is so underrated. The pig is pretty self explanatory, but how a player uses the hawk determines how good a beastmaster player is. Using the hawk to effectively scout means you can avoid unfavourable engagements, scout rosh, find the enemy carry during smoke ganks, find uphill wards, scout runes and so much more. Once this skill is lvl 3, this hawk should ALWAYS be flying around providing vision. When smoke ganking, remember to smoke the hawk as well otherwise the enemy team is going to start cottoning on to what the bird flying into their jungle means is about to happen. During team fights remember to stick the boar on enemy carries as the movement and attack speed slow is actually a huge deal, and it goes through bkb. He also has a dot that prevents blink. HUGELY UNDERRATED SKILL

Inner Beast Not much to say here, super good aura, makes your carries punch harder, makes your pets punch harder, basically a free hyperstone for your entire team. Lvl it up last, but don’t underestimate how strong it can be.

Primal Roar Your ulti is pretty simple, it does a substantial stun with a substantial amount of damage. It also slows everyone down by 50% in a radius, don’t forget this as it can be extremely useful in team fights. Always roar the enemy carry in team fights, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY USE BKB. That is your job in late game: roar the enemy carry when they bkb, stick the pig on them, don’t die. Job done. When the enemy carry’s bkb is down to four seconds, that is conveniently how long your ult lasts for. You can effectively deny their ability to bkb for the entire game, excellent. Getting scepter will make this much easier to do consistently.

Heroes that Beastmaster Excels against Squishy heroes, mobility heroes without an innate blink, heroes that rely heavily on bkb, heroes that like to solo rosh, heroes that have small mana pools.

Nightstalker, ursa, juggernaut (pig slows through spin, roar stuns through spin, summons eat up omnislashses), tidehuunter (pig prevents blink), slark (hawk prevents regen), pa, void, phoenix (aura blows his ulti up).

Heroes that Beastmaster struggles against Axe (more creeps = more spins), clockwork (rocket kills bird everytime), eathshaker, sniper (early game you will destroy him, late game he will destroy you)