Dota 2 Omniknight Guide

Dota 2 Omniknight Guide by aboxofhotdish

Hi my name is AboxOfHotdish.

I have played 180 games as OmniKnight and have a 75.56% win rate on him.

http://www.dotabuff.com/players/65732506/matches?hero=omniknight

Here is my guide to OmniKnight.

this guide is aimed at players 3.5k and lower

*INTRO*

First off, i often see OmniKnight being played poorly and having bad item decisions on him. i am here to teach you how to play FIELD MEDIC OMNI.

What is FIELD MEDIC OMNI you ask?

FIELD MEDIC OMNI is playing Omni in a way that you are the teams lifeline and blood. Your job is to minimize as much death in the game for your team as possible.

But isn’t that how omni is normally played?

Yes that is how is supposed to be normally played. Omni is a super defensive support, but they say that a good defense is a good offense, and omni does this best. But lately i am seeing a lot of people play that skadi/yasha/phase boots build, while maxing degen aura. While this build can work, it makes Omni a super greedy support and doesn’t offer the team that much. We don’t want that. We are the backbone of the team. We are going to be in all the teamfights and make sure our team stays alive.

*LANING PHASE & SKILL BUILD*

Omni is best played with a core that likes to get into people’s faces ( we will get into the list of good allies later). Omni benefits the most when he is played with an aggressive core in lane because he offers your core a lot of protection. Omni is also a pretty beefy support since he has good strength gain ( 2.65). Omni is very good at running up and trading hits with the enemy heroes early in the laning stage. but be careful not to harass too much because you don’t waste all your tangos right away in lane,

The laning phase is Omni’s weakest part of the game. He has a starting HP of 530 base armour of 5 and a mana pool 221. This means you can only throw out purification twice in lane without having to regen. All of Omni’s skills aren’t that good at lvl 1.

Purification has a heal/damage of 90 with a 100 mana cost at level one which is pretty abysmal.

Repel’s duration at lvl 1 is 6 seconds with a mana cost of 50 which is okay, but not great.

Degen Aura at lvl 1 is 10% slow and a attack speed slow of 10, which is awful, you will hardly notice the Degen Aura at lvl 1.

When Omni gets lvl 3 is when he starts to have a high impact in the game. You should try and to avoid engaging with your opponents until you have 2 levels in your heal. Your skill build for FIELD MEDIC OMNI should be, maxing Purification then Repel then taking a point in your ult whenever you can, and only taking your first point in Degen Aura at lvl 10.

Why take your first point in Degen Aura at lvl 10? It’s a good spell.

It is a good spell, but it doesn’t help keep our teammates alive. Degen Aura isn’t that good untill lvl 3 when it jumps from 18% to 26%. That is 3 skill points you are taking away before lvl 10. At lvl 10 you could have a 360 heal/damage and a 12 second BKB for your core’s with a 2 second cool down and a 10% slow. Building your skills this ways give you maximum survivability to your cores at lvl 10 and that’s what we want.

Is there ever a situation where i should skill Degen Aura before lvl 10?

Yes there is, there is always an exception to the rules. A situation for skilling Degen before lvl 10 isn’t very common but is sometimes needed.

Here is an example when i skilled Degen Aura early. I rotated top rune to get it and it happens to be a haste, i still had a skill point open, i look mid and see there midlaner is low health and starting to retreat. I skill Degen so i will be able to hit him more and i am able to run him down and kill him fairly quickly. I could of gotten away with not skilling Degen but i wanted to get back to lane as fast as possible. There will always be a situation where you will need to skill something over something else. It’s best to use your own judgment in these situations.

The hero’s that Omni is good with in lane are pretty much any melee hero since they all like to get up and personal. Some of the more notable heroes he likes to lane with are ( in no particular order.) :

1.Axe. Axe and Omni in a lane together is very deadly because of Axe’s call. Pretty easy combo to understand. Axe’s call gets 1 or 2 heros in and you use your Purification.

1. Phantom Assassin. She is perfect for Omni, has her own slow, blink Initiation and a defensive passive. Omni lets Phantom Assassin get really aggressive in lane because they have a high burst potential with PA blinking in and Omni using Purification on her and repelling PA so she can’t get stunned.
2. The snowball from Cobalt, Ymir the Tusk. Tusk and Omni work very well together and works somewhat like the Tusk N’ Techies combo. High burst damage with a stun and having an ice shards to block them in will tend to result in a death for the enemy hero.
3. BristleBack. Bristle is a very in your face type of hero more so than others and Omni is very good at keeping him alive while he rushes down heros in the lane. This lane has high damage output through using Quill Spray and Purification.
4. Slark. Slark and Omni like what each other do. Omni likes the fact that Slark can hold an enemy in place for 3.5 seconds at all levels and Slark likes that fact that Omni can use a 180 damage/heal nuke at lvl 3. So Slark pounces for 100 damage ( if he took 2 points in pounce by lvl 3) and then uses dark pact for 75 damage ( if he took 1 point by lvl 3) now Slark has done 175 damage then Omni heals you for 180 and damaging the enemy for 180 pure damage. that’s 355 damage ( before magic resistance and such) in a burst. There is high kill potential but the enemy will need to be harassed a bit.

*ITEMIZATION AND LANING*

For my starting items i always get Donkey, 2 wards, 2 GG branches, 2 clarities and a pack of tangos. the starting items are up to you, this is just my personal preference. This helps my position 4 by letting them buy more items and they tend to buy the flying donkey and help with wards in the early game.

As Gametendo mention getting a Ring of Protection and a Stout shield will really beef Omni up in the laning stage and able to transition the Ring of Protection into a Basi and then later turning that into a Vlad’s if the situation calls for it.

OmniKnight only needs 2 items for the entire game, everything else is pretty much luxury.

Right before we get into the 2 core items you will need i just need to say, DON’T GET ORB OF VENOM. I know a lot of you like this item on this hero because of the MS slow it gives and it pairs well with Degen Aura. Don’t get this item, we already went over why Degen isn’t good at early levels. OoV will only set you back and delay the actual items Omni needs.

Your first item you get on Omni is Soul Ring because this lets you spam your heal out. Omni’s Purification cast cost is less than the amount of mana soul ring gives you until you have 4 points into his Purification and even then lvl 4 purification only costs 160.

The process building up to Soul Ring is very versatile for Omni, i tend to try to get the sage’s mask first so i have the mana regen but if my core is getting harassed a lot or if i am on low HP i will buy the Ring Of Regen so i can give it to my core so they can heal up a bit or if i desperately am low on hp and always fighting.

The second item you need is Arcane Boots. this will pretty much fix Omni’s mana problems and let him spam all his spells out.

Hey AboxOfHotdish isn’t having both arcane boots and soul ring excessive? You surely don’t need that much mana.

Sure that’s a pretty normal thought to have because you usually have enough sustain just through mana boots or Soul Ring. but that’s where we start to play a little differently. Once you have these 2 items there is no reason why your teammates should be running around with missing health, unless they are on the other side of the map. You should now be spamming your heal whenever it’s off cooldown ( unless everyone is at 100% health.)

Now that you have your 2 core items it’s time to look your teammates items and who you are playing against to determine your next item.

Items of interest are:

Eul’s Scepter of Divinity. ( becomes a core item when playing against silencer.)

Force Staff.

Mekansm ( later turned into Guardian Greaves)

Aghanim’s Scepter

Refresher Orb ( only after you get Scepter)

Some situations where you want to rush scepter right after Soul Ring and Arcane Boots is when you are playing against Sven, Juggernaut, Faceless Void, Phantom Assassin Anti-Mage and Legion Commander.

*TEAM FIGHTS AND YOUR ALLIES*

So for this portion of the guide i would like to credit a lot of it to this man. ( all memes aside) He is the reason i started playing OmniKnight and had a huge influence on how i play support and Dota in general. If you haven’t seen his guides they are amazing, check them out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-J9mfcExhg&ab_channel=SirActionSlacks1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NsatmBVGZY&ab_channel=SirActionSlacks1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6JbwUjQCEM&ab_channel=SirActionSlacks1

They might be a bit outdated but they are really informative.

Back to the guide.

So at this point you have determined who is competent and who is the guy that is popping his BKB on accident when the dragonfly appears on his screen because it was a “reflex.” . So now you should set a value point on your teammates. This will determine who you will prioritize your spells on during teamfights.

Here is an example of how it should look like:

1. Your position 1 core.

2 & 3. This will often shift during the game between your offlaner and your mid laner.

4. You, but you are subject to change for the first position of being prioritized because you can’t save your team if you are dead.

5. your position 4 support/ jungler.

So during teamfights you should try to always have your carry repealed especially when you are sieging a tower because you never know when you will get blink ravaged. You should always be positioned in the back of your team or hiding in the fog of war because at this point the enemy team will notice that you are the most competent player on your team and will see you as the problem instead of your cores.

When should i ult?

Most of the time you should ult when a teamfight breaks out, but there will be those situations when there is an enemy Invoker who thinks he hard counters you because his tornado purges your stuff. but this is wrong, sure Invoker’s tornado does in fact purge your shit, but 99% of the time enemy Invokers open with tornado, so all you have to do is just wait out the tornado and you can ult. but make sure YOU DON’T REPEL SOMEONE UNDER THEEFFECT OF GUARDIAN ANGEL nvm i had a visual glitch making it look like they were no longer under effect of GA.

Another thing you will want to do is keep track of your teammates status effects, especially when they get negative ones. Most negative status effects can be blocked/purged with repel.

Here is an example of a spell being blocked/purged.

Ogre Magi’s ignite can be blocked and purged with repel. What i mean by blocked is that, if the projectile is traveling and you manage to repel the target before ignite’s projectile hits you, it won’t do any damage or slow you, effectively “blocking” the spell. Now let’s say the target is hit with ignite, they will take the initial damage and some tick damage, if you cast repel on a target under the effect of ignite it will purge the spell off them and they will stop taking tick damage.

Here is an example of a spell being blocked but not purged.

So if you don’t know Sniper’s Assassinate skill pierces spell immunity and can not be purged but the damage does not pierce spell immunity. So if you are under the effects of spell immunity he can still target you but when the projectile connects onto you if you are still spell immune it won’t do damage.

Now let’s say you don’t have Repel on and it’s on cooldown because you accidentally repelled a creep 12 seconds ago and you notice a little red square with the assassinate icon in it above your health bar on your HUD and because of 6.83 we all know of the ho ho ha ha ability that Sniper has now you see the projectile being fired and your Repel is now off cool down and you quickly use Repel on your self while the projectile is in the air and then it connects with you. It doesn’t do damage now because your spell immune at the instance of damage.

Another thing to note when playing against Sniper as Omni, always check your allies for this debuff and try to Repel them as fast as possible, i have saved countless lives because of this.

*GENERAL GAMEPLAY AND TIPS.*

Here is just some general tips that i do throughout the game.

When you are warding by yourself always Repel yourself before you go uphill, you never know what’s up there.

Always carry a TP, when in danger you can always self Repel then TP home, a lot of the time this will make you survive an survivable situations.

Always alt+click the clock when you hear rosh die or set a quick chat to time. This way you will always have a general idea when rosh will be up.

Use your Purification to harass down enemies in lane when they go up to take a last hit ( don’t do this too often or you will severely push the lane)

When using your Purification in lane to harass cancel the animation every once in awhile to fake out the enemy into them missing last hits. ( warning: this only works at higher levels of play when people start paying attention to cast animations.)

Check the inventory of the enemy players often, you don’t want to be caught off guard with a surprise Blink Dagger.

When you see an enemy support run up to a cliff and then immediately run back, they warded.

It’s okay to carry around a Quelling blade as OmniKnight because you won’t always have someone ranged to take out wards that are on cliffs. ( But try not to get a Quelling blade before you get Soul Ring and Arcane Boots as it will set you back.).

Repel will rip the effects of all the runes off ( regeneration , haste, double damage and Invisibility.) So when an enemy hero is under the effect of one these use your repel on them to rip it off.

Well this is my idiots guide to playing OmniKnight, i will make sure to make any changes if needed. Thank you if you managed to read this much.