Timbersaw and Clock. If you're playing against a squishy tri - or even better, a duo lane - you can rape if they don't play with caution
I should learn clock better than i know him. mostly see force staff, afhs and blademail on him... though I feel like blink would be cool.
Timber i really like but think he is sorta out of the meta atm. Seems heavily reliant on a blood stone.
Do you guys actually follow the meta at all or just throw in some random heroes?
Not really Concede, consider picking Timber when you see a squishy lineup or lots of STR heros who can't kill you easily. I admit Bloodstone it's a bit too expensive for what it gives you in the current meta. Going Arcane - Dagger is awesome as well if your team has more Arcane boots than just you.
Yeah, ofc how could I forget Doom. Stupid OP faceroll hero that gets farm out of his ass.
Yea i want to incorporate doom more... I played pretty poorly with him when I first tried him. He wasn't in HoN....
Now I don't want to pick him and lose more and have the winrate get even shittier.
I think clock is the one i have to really make happen.... any farming strategies for clock with his skills?\
And darkseer seems really solid too, but very unconventional.
Wind, brew, beast, brist, clock, tide undy, doom, centaur, earthshacker, timbasaw, viper, darkseer...
You can solo offlane basically any hero, and often times it's best to grab whatever hero your team would most benefit from instead of from a list of heroes that you view as "typical" offlaners. If you need an Omniknight but already have your safelane tri (or dual and jungler/roamer) and a mid, guess what hero you're taking to the offlane? (Hint: it's Omniknight.) You can even get a ton of farm if the enemy has a weak trilane (or heaven forbid, a weak *dual* lane).
I'll list the heroes that I would *NOT* be comfortable taking to a solo offlane against basically any heroes:
Riki. Too squishy, farm-dependent, and with an unreliable escape. He can't be "okay" if he just leeches lvl 6.
Terrorblade. Same as Riki.
OD. Same as above.
Crystal Maiden. Squishiest, slowest hero in the game, who doesn't really benefit from the levels or potential farm.
This concludes the list. Questions?
^
no. no you can not solo offlane any hero. And your example for omniknight is silly because he can be played solo offlane. I have been considering using him for it. You use repel to ensure your safety.
earthshaker and omniknight kzz proven.
lc's good if their disables are mainly slows/frost bite
how have i forgotten phoenix!
I'm really interested in this hero, but the build order seems so locked and i have no experience with him.
^pretty sure 2k meta is the only one X6 is aware of.... not sure why he is talking about captains mode.
2k meta doesnt have such thing as offlane, its all dual lanes so doesnt really matter whether you are in safe or off
here in 3k you can see magnus, bloodseeker, and slardar off.
Also I've heard people talking about sniper off, has anyone tried it with success?
^sniper offlane is a very specific thing and should only be done if your team is ok with it, because pubs wont understand wtf you are doing.
An offlane sniper will max shrapnel first. The idea is to use the huge AOE and cast range to get CS and harass your opposing carries last hitting, as well as pushing the enemy tower. This means you will be putting points into headshot last, opting for 2-3 points in take aim first. Your itemization will be a blink dagger with either a force staff or phase boots. some go all three but if you get force staff and blink i think treads are more appropriate. Many will also do blink with mask.
You maximize mobility and range so that you do damage, specifically to towers, from really far away.
^^ I really cant see bloodseeker working at all, although mag seems like he could work well even at a higher skill.
Personally I have been using PA and LC as suicide solo heroes in 3k.
I rarely see Batriders on pub, so we could say it's "outside of the box". Good against push, good against Void.
Same with ElderTitan...
Oh, and Furion+LD wasn't even mentioned yet as good offlaners, wut
magnus is decent even at 4k's (highest ive been playin)
i see batriders all the time lately dont know why the hype
furion most time is picked as an afk jungler, people dont really know how to play him offlane
bloodcyka proly won't work on higher rates because he will be zoned out so he won't be able to regen. people know how to control the lane also so he can get a long time without 'killable' creeps, and once you zone him out there is no shit he can do to come back, unless healing up/going back to base/etc, so it would be a pretty shitty offlane imo.
TA could work in an organized team if your team go to an aggro tri and you get to 1v1 the enemy offlaner but VERY sittuational.
PA is shitty too, if enemy got an skywrath ur pretty much fucked
Timber is probably the best choice, many higher ranked chinese server player have timber as their most played hero
I reckon the reason is because
1. He is durable
2. He can escape ES's path block (even high tier offlane like clock, doom or tide can't even escape this shit)
3. He has 2 pure damages skill, very good at current meta str heroes line up
4. He has big AoE to shit on pushing lineup.
5. He's fun to play? YES HE IS
6. Phantom lancer? Naga Siren? TB?? He shit on them.
7. He's the reason why i lost 4 times in a row as PL and dropped my winrate 
Let's just be honest even in low tier games like mine,
ES's path block and another stun support smoke in at early level is not rare to see.
clock cannot escape ES fissure but he can keep people away from him with that annoying drain thing (forgot the skills name), so its pretty much the same
timber is somehow really weak at comp scene right now, in TI4 he had 38% winrate, while clock had 60%
but i dont really know why timber is weak, so everything i say is bullshit
perhaps the meta does not suit his playstyle
Razor.
With so many people jungling nowadays, you're pretty much against a 1 v 2 lineup. If support decides to zone you, link him n take his dmg and force him back. Good thing about link is that it lasts you pretty much how long the CD is. Anyways, if support goes to pull or for some reasons is out of position to help his carry, you can drain the carry's dmg. If support shows up, you can now use the added dmg against him.
It is important you damage the person you don't steal from first (assuming you're outnumbered) because once you get rid of him, you're up against somebody who has 0 damage and is no longer able to kill you (hence you can choose to run or continue to fight).
If they happen to be in a trilane, I would put more levels in Plasma Field because it can put out SO much damage (assuming the enemies are much lower leveled than you). Make sure you don't use Plasma Field when they are close, you want to use it to kill at the end when they're running away or to initiate from a far distance so it does the maximum damage.
I hardly get the passive UNLESS I'm against multiple target skills and even then, I'd just get one level.
My general build is 4 (plasma) 2 (link) 1 (passive) 0 (ult) by level 7 and 4-4-1-0 by level 9. I simply don't see my ults scaling well enough early game.
Anyways, all that said, most important is to play smart and understand how your enemies match up to you. Since there's always a Void nowadays, you can simply take his damage.
Sincerely,
A Razor player who has gone from 4.7 to 5k in 2 weeks.
in pubs timber is king, really you can solo against 2 or even 3 heroes, and get a firstblood triple kill.
Timber needs farm to be really effective, hence his low winrate recently when played competitively. Offlaners usually tend to be zoned out a lot and need to have some sort of recovery skills in order to cope with the first minutes of not gaining anything from the lane. Batrider's firefly fits this purpose perfectly, which is one great thing about Batrider. However, I don't think Timber has such a good skill that allows him to farm up real quick to make up for the first minutes of being zoned. Sure, in pubs, there is a good chance that the enemy will not run a trilane that will be able to zone out timber perfectly. Timber is deadweight when he has few farm imo.
I am no pro by any means, however that is the insight I'd think I have on this subject.
That's my list starting with the most solid offlaner first.
Broodmother (if enemy has no answer)
Faceless void
Earth Spirit
Tide
Legion Commander
Timbersaw
Bristleback
Centaur
Beastmaster (Dire)
Clockwerk
Dark Seer
Lich
Phoenix
Nature Prophet
Nyx Assassin
Mirana
Spirit Breaker
Windrunner
Guess list may be different for low level pubs where people might fail to exploit lousy hardlaners such as Windrunner, Mirana and Weaver.
That's how it stands for my games though.
Concede, if you wanna learn a new hero, you can try playing it on a smurf so you don't screw with your wr, kdas on your main acc.
I find myself offlaning a variety of heroes that are not normally done.
Meepo
Earth Shaker
Jug
Sven
I love soloing Axe, a quick lv 6 and it is really easy to gank and get kills on the other lanes.
The thing people at my level don't realize(+3k) is that when you solo it's not too gets loads of farm it's to get a lvl advantage and gank, too make up for your lack of farm.
^meepo solo is really easy to gank, against people with a brain he will feed.
and meepo without farm is sooo useless, but in 3k i can offlane with kunkka, pudge, slark and still win against a dual lane or even 3lane.
but what im trying to say, go meepo mid or safelane and get ez games.
In this case I had no choice of my position, a medusa and Life Stealer was last picked.
Here is the game:
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/829065221
It worked up too a point, if our carries had played better we would have won.
Notice that Medusa never got Split-shot. Turns out is was a smurf account.
Lifestealer can hardlane better than meepo thanks to rage.
Hell, even medusa used to be a hardlaner back in warcraft 3.
Meepo is abysmal hardlaner.
I never said he was viable as a solo, just that I have had to do it.
The game I linked was an example.
Pubs are not known for their wisdom in laning. Life wanted too jungle and Medusa wanted safe lane. Rather than argue and start the game off with that, I just accepted it and did the best I could.
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I've been using a lot of tide and centaur. BB as always... throwing in some others like Kotl
Looking for some outside the box suggestions. Prefer durable position 3 or 4 heroes.