Dota 2 Heroes – An Introduction to Dazzle the Shadow Priest

By: Jason McCarthy

  |   December 10th, 2012   |  

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Dazzle the Shadow Priest is a ranged intelligence support hero. Just like Omniknight, he has the capability of keeping team-mates alive.

His first ability Poison Touch slows targets, damages them overtime and eventually stuns them in place. At Level 4, it will do 224 damage over a 7-second period. It will also slow for 33% for the 1^st second, which goes to 66% for the 2^nd second and goes on to completely disable the target afterwards. It also has a mini-stun that will apply on contact, thus cancelling channelling skills becomes an important part of this hero.

His second skill Shallow Grave is a single-target buff for allies that will literally prevent them from dying for 5 seconds. The cool-down of this skill will go down while the range will go up per level of the skill, which are the main benefits of upgrading it. Uses of this should be obvious with the fact that you are making someone on your team invulnerable, which more often than not will be when they are very low. One anomaly of this skill is that Axe’s ultimate Culling Blade will actually still work through this buff.

His third ability Shadow Wave is a skill that will heal allies and damage enemies in a small Area of Effect (AoE). At Level 4, the skill will create a link between as many as 5 allied units, healing them for up to 140 while dealing the same in damage to units within a certain AoE of them. The main target needs to be an ally as it will only link to other ally units. The damage dealt is in a 475 AoE and is physical damage, meaning it will go through magic immune targets.

Dazzle’s ultimate Weave is a 575 AoE spell that can be used as both offensively, as well as defensively. When placed on allies, it will give them one additional armour per second for 24 seconds, giving them a total of 24 armour over the entire duration of the skill. The opposite effect occurs on enemies, lowering their armour to an eventual -24.

Aghanim’s Scepter can be picked up by Dazzle it will increase the duration of his ultimate from 24 seconds to 30, as well as increase its AoE from 575 to 775.

While Dazzle’s primary role is to support allies through timely heals and the ever-so-useful Shallow Grave, it is never a bad idea to go for damage items on him. Desolator in particular works quite well on him as it stacks with his ultimate, lowering the armour of enemy heroes even further. The additional damage from Desolator also allows him to make the most of the slow by his first skill Poison Touch.

Disclaimer: The research used in this article is accredited to Dota Cinema and SUNSfan. No copyright infringement is intended.