Dota 2: Combo with Necrophos and Terrorblade

Dota includes several abilities that can be combined in very creative ways. This allows for short and long-term synergies which, if well explored, can dictate the course of a match. In this article, I’ll talk about one of these combos, with Necrophos and Terrorblade as the center of the strategy.

The combo can be executed with any combination of heroes, as long as Necro and Terrorblade are on the team and ideally the two will be the offlaner duo.

It’s worth noting that, as I always say in articles like this one, this strategy should preferably be used alongside a friend or a group of friends who can communicate freely during the match, and it’ll be much more difficult to set this up with a stranger.

Necrophos

Necro is a mid and close-range combat hero with skills that make him a difficult opponent to deal with, being one of the main counters to strength heroes due to his great ability to reduce health regeneration and stay out of range of physical attacks.

Necro has skills which allow him to heal himself and other allied units while dealing damage to enemies. He can assume an ethereal form, vulnerable to magical attacks but immune to physical ones and with amplified regeneration. He has an aura that causes damage around him and his ultimate disables a target and deals damage to it equal to the amount of health that target has lost, and gives you permanent regen points if the target dies under the effect of this skill.

Necro has two facets. Profane Potency grants Area of ​​Effect bonuses based on his innate ability, Sadist. This ability grants health and mana regen for each hero killed. His other facet, Rapid Decay, grants Necro movement bonuses based on the amount of slow he causes to enemies.

Aghanim’s Scepter improves the Heartstopper Aura skill, which will then deal more AoE damage. Aghanim’s Shard grants him the Death Seeker skill, which allows Necro to quickly move towards his enemies.

Terrorblade

Terrorblade is a classic carry. His abilities allow him to create copies of enemy heroes, which he controls, as well as create a copy of himself. He can transform into his demonic form, switching from melee to ranged attacks. His ultimate, Sunder, allows him to swap health with a target hero.

Dark Unity is Terror's innate ability, and grants bonus damage to his illusions within a certain area.

Aghanim's Scepter and Shard grant, respectively, the skills Terror Wave and Demon Zeal. Terror Wave turns Terrorblade into an even more demonic form, extending the effect of his Demon Form ability. Demon Zeal grants bonus regeneration, movement speed, and attack speed to Terrorblade's illusions.

Necro and Terror will be the offlane duo, which means that Terror will focus on farming, as the carry of the vulnerable lane, while Necro will be the Nuker/Disabler support, having the role of bombarding enemies with his skills to protect the lane and allow his teammate to gain gold and experience easier. Use Death Pulse to be aggressive against the enemies and don't forget to buy wards to keep the jungle safe and avoid ganks from other lanes.

Radiance and Shiva’s Guard are incredible items for Necro, granting evasion and increasing the damage potential of his aura with the magical damage bonus provided by Radiance and the area of ​​effect bonus provided by Shiva’s. In addition, Shiva’s will make Necro more resilient and will cause slow and reduce regeneration and healing on enemies when Shiva’s is activated.

Terror needs damage items and ones that give him attack speed. Manta Style is a perfect item for this hero, since it not only grants the necessary bonuses, but also allows him to create more illusions. Items such as Black King Bar, Monkey King Bar and Eye of Skadi are almost mandatory in the current metagame, giving him everything a good carry needs to survive in combat. The Hurricane Pike is another viable option, as it’ll give the hero a greater attack range while also being able to be used to move quickly. But for the combo, it’s much more interesting to use Silver Edge for the reason I’ll explain below.

How Does the Combo Work?

The idea here is to basically combine both heroes’ ultimates to secure a few good kills. Terror can purposely allow his health to get low, be it by farming in the jungle without healing or by actively participating in the lane until both heroes reach level 6, always keeping an eye out for enemy advance. As soon as the duo has their ults ready, Terrorblade will use Sunder on an enemy hero and Necro will use his Reaper's Scythe right after, to literally reap the target's HP, guaranteeing gold to both heroes.

The enemy carry is a good target for the combo, as it will put them at a disadvantage, unless the support is more vulnerable, which also ends up putting the enemy team disadvantaged anyways.

As soon as the lane phase ends, the duo should start looking for other opportunities to secure kills with the combo and, to do so, they’ll need to focus on some specific items and deal with possible counters.

Evading Counters

Linken’s Sphere and Black King Bar are the main items against this combo, but this can be avoided with strategy. Linken’s is an item which blocks most skills that require a target, such as the ultimates used in the combo, but can be bypassed with another skill that uses target, such as an item’s skill, for example.

Rod of Atos is a very useful item for Necro, as it pins a target enemy to the ground, which allows you to get closer to bombard the target more easily or gank them, but it also serves perfectly to get around Linken’s Sphere, activating Linken’s block and leaving the item on cooldown, which allows the combo to target the enemy and happen.

Black King Bar is a little different. This item grants a good amount of magic and damage resistance, and makes the target basically immune to any debuffs, which blocks the use of the combo's ults. This is where the Nullifier comes in, a powerful item that can remove all the BKB’s effects, making the target vulnerable again, even after activating its protection against debuffs. This is an especially useful item for Terror, as it grants a large bonus to damage, armor and regeneration.

This is a very fun and old combo in the game. In the next articles, we’ll talk more about Necrophos and a new interaction that appeared in patch 7.38, capable of entirely changing the course of a match.

I finish here another article. Leave your questions, suggestions, criticisms and/or compliments in the comments. Thanks for reading, and see you next time.