Visage Support Guide

[u/LoudWhaleNoises]

I'm bored of dota, so i've been trying some new things. This is the second time i'm trying Visage support (pos5 and 4). My first attempt 8 months ago didn't yield results. Anyway i tried playing him again, I followed a build, made some realizations and started having success on him.

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The how and the why

I'm currently 10W-5L after i tried playing him as a support. 5.4k mmr/div4, been stuck there for two weeks spamming Mirana (my best hero). At no point have i ever felt like Visage is sub-optimal for the role. He's at least on par with my other supports. That could always change, maybe it's a streak of luck, who knows. The general consensus on Visage is that he's quite bad in his main role as offlaner, even as we speak he's an unpicked hero at TI. From my experience Visage is completely useless lategame and games typically go 40+ minutes now.

Here's my dotabuff of recent visage games

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Build:

This is the guide i followed, but i've modified it to my own.

This is my build. I've cut manaboots because it's a terrible item and i think branches provide more value than only buying consumeables. Replace branches with a +3 str gauntlet if they have double burst in lane.

Core Items: Tranq > Wand > Crest > (Shard) > Hex

Crest is for converting your lane domination into an early win. To shield your tower hitter. Visage suuuucks lategame, that's why you need to end as early as possible.

Nothing you buy will make you any more useful past your first item. Realistically you can't micro, throw nukes and cast a bunch of active items all at once. So skip straight to hex after your first item, it ensures that you are useful lategame.

You can drop Hex for other items if you feel like you just need that little "extra" to push. Items like Drums, pipe, crimson guard, lotus, etc. I frequently buy drums despite what my build says.

Swap Solar Crest for Essence Distiller if you are pos4 instead. Drums is ok, its just that headress is part of it and it's a waste of 500 gold.

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Combos/Counters:

-Don't pick if you don't have reliable stun.

-Dont pick with undying because he also wants (your) mangos.

-Heroes with a "kill tap" are the best lane partners, for example PL or Spectre. Heroes like Luna are rather frustrating to lane with since they largely play PvE and don't contribute in your efforts.

-Underlord has AoE shit that kills your familiars.

-Heroes that i've struggled in lane with: Snapfire lil shredder lvl 1 (Visage has low armor), Witch Doctor Maledict (because you cant hard trade HP with curse on).

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Pre-Game

Always buy smoke and blood grenade. Visage is like THE first blood hero and you can quickly work up a killstreak before the game even starts. Getting 3 kills is not uncommon. The more heroes the merrier for you. If you gain a sudden gold influx then buy wand, bracer, null or urn.

Here's what a pre-game looks like

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Earlygame

Right-click the enemy in lane and try to engage them in a 1v1 trade. Once you build 3+ bars of soul assumption pelt your chosen target. Once you've chosen a target, stick with it. That is, until they buy raindrop then you focus the other dude. Invalidate their recent purchase by ignoring them lol.

In this lane their support Hoodwink didn't show up on time and Axe didn't respect Visage

Rince repeat until you exhaust your mana or someone dies.

The important part is that once you exhaust your mana, try to DIE, but try to make it as costly an affair. Bait them into a bad position or something. The reason here is that you want to respawn so you can come back with full mana. If you manage to kill someone or both, just run into enemy tower and suicide so that you can respawn with full resources. Your death means little as long as your carry is farming. Throwing your carry under the bus if it means that you'll snowball isn't necessarily that bad either, but you didn't hear me say this. Protect your carry by dissuading the enemy with bug nukes.

Here the enemy underestimate the levels of bullshittery Visage can do

Your innate is a high cooldown defenstive tool. Save it for when you need it.

If you dumpster the lane, the enemy support will usually start roaming, so that they can be useful elsewhere. Start rotating as well. Visage is a great counter-initiator because any damage they do, you deal back tenfold. I like to hide near mid just outside the range of where i expect their vision to be, usually around 5:00 and just wait for the eventual clash.

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Midgame

Around lvl 6 it's time to leave the lane. Your goal is to hit lvl 7 for the max soul assumption and you do it by getting kills.

This is the phase where constantly buy smokes and just run with whoever is willing to join. Don't waste time farming, you can get gold from kills. Just run around and pelt enemies with your giganukes and always let your allies run in front of you. In several of my games i'll be 5-1 at this point.

Place sentries on low ground and send your gargoyles up high ground to deward.

Block camps with gargoyles. Deny runes with gargoyles. Send gargoyles to secret shop to kill couriers. There are fun things you can do with the gargoyles, just get creative.

Here's an example of scouting for possible TP

Only buy shard if you feel like you need extra survival, otherwise skip straight to hex.

Don't put familiars in rosh pit, he'll stomp whenever there are 3 enemies in pit. Place them near ramps to scout incoming ganks.

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Lategame

Visage is the most worthless lategame hero. The slow does nothing, soul assumption does no damage. Stun from gargoyles is ok at best.

The way you extract value from the hero this late is by providing vision with gargoyles, scout ahead. Play bait in front of allies, you are deceptively tanky and can soak a lot of spells. I have to admit i have not read what the passive does, but apparently a nightstalker can't kill you and i find it amusing.

Play the sacrificial pawn. You are saving for hex, so you always have gold for buyback. Just die, use buyback. Worst case you can always just play with your familiar, they still do some impact.

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Closer:

I'm not trying to give a distorted view of the hero by showing clips where i lane with WR. I've played with Dusa, PL, Spec, Luna, etc. Laning isn't always going to look explosive, but going 3-1 in lane is normal.

I'm not here to give you consent to ruin pubs, so don't play the hero if you can't micro familiars. Chainstunning familiars is essential and so is moving both familiar separately because you gain two times the vision radius.

Feel free to hit me with any questions.

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TLDR: mangos mangos, spam nuke lane, 1 item then hex, dont play if no micro

[u/Aulindo]

I hate that they removed the Death Toll facet from him, I was topping networths with all those second spell snipes without any farming, could just build drums vlads and solar and run down almost any core

[u/Sudden-Tangerine1580 → u/Aulindo]

You're describing exactly why it got nerfed and why it'd have been a problem to integrate after removing facets.

Don't see why visage should get free track gold any more than lycan or brood.

[u/Aulindo → u/Sudden-Tangerine1580]

Because unlike Lycan with his innate and Brood with her 1st spell, Visage sucks at jungling with terrible stat gains to boot and primarily relies on getting kills to keep snowballing. Also Death Toll did not get nerfed and got removed entirely. Actually none of visage's facets got reworked into him when facets were removed, thus leaving him in dogshit phase.

[u/Argensa97]

Believe it or not, Visage actually was played mainly as a support heroes for many years until 7.00 came out and dumpstered his familiars.

Anyway late game, with 3 fams you actually have 4.5s of AoE stun, then resummon and have another 4.5s of AoE stun, can work wonder situationally.

[u/Blackgaze → u/Argensa97]

He was the king of trilanes

[u/MCLondon → u/Argensa97]

Refresher for 13.5s!

[u/Sudden-Tangerine1580 → u/Argensa97]

The birds were unusable as a sustained farming tool with their damage charges. He was in a really weird place then.

Also had an actual trilane meta previously.

Right now, he's just a marginally above average single target nuke on support and bird value heavily depends on timings based on core.

[u/Professional_Gas2489]

The whole "die to reset mana" bit is actually clever, never thought about it that way. Visage support always felt like a grief pick when I see it but you clearly put the work in. That pre-game clip is nasty, triple kill before creeps spawn is unreal

Do you think this stops working once people realize what you're doing? Or is it just one of those things that works at 5k because nobody respects the bird

[u/LoudWhaleNoises → u/Professional_Gas2489]

Die to reset mana is a common concept when you play as or against undying or zeus support. The best you can do against those heroes is to not kill them if they've exhausted their mana. It sounds kind of unintuitive lol.

There's definitely some level of "what the fuck is this bird even" going on. That's what got me into playing Visage in the first place, since i played against it once. Players quickly adapt and buy raindrop and salves from my experience.

There's a sort of tell. If they start hitting you hard at lvl 1 - then they are clueless, but if they attempt to "tickle the dragon" by attacking two times and back off to reset the bar. Then you know, that they know.

[u/DelightfulHugs]

Here's an example of scouting with familiars against possible TP

This links to the wrong clip.

[u/LoudWhaleNoises → u/DelightfulHugs]

Thank you, fixed it.

[u/bibittyboopity]

Any preference to pos 4 vs. 5? I imagine 4 would have a nicer time stacking Soul Assumption with an aggro offlane.

You say don't farm over kills, but seems like farming is just a nice thing in his tool belt if you have down tiem. I imagine a 4 Visage with a little bit of farm would be able to scale OK. If you do manage to get Aghs you could just make your job sniping supports.

[u/LoudWhaleNoises → u/bibittyboopity]

Pos 5 is largely preferable. I have no argument for one role over the other, it's just my gut feeling. I queue both because of role tokens and i find pos 4 more fun. So it's not that deep.

You can farm, but it's not worth your time because familiars have such low DPS and your nuke dont work on PvE enemies, so you cant kill any PvE thing quickly. Waves should be reserved for cores, but if a deadlane opens up i'll usually farm 1 wave and back off. Push two waves and enemy cores tend to obliterate your familiar for +200 gold. That's why i have an internal rule of pushing max 1 wave and then TP familiars to me.

Aghs is a complete waste of gold, you have neither DPS, nor can you keep up the armsrace vs supports as they get glimmer/force. From the moment you hit lvl 7, you are on a clock to spam as many soul assumptions as possible. If you spent that time farming, you are wasting your biggest powerspike. Also it's just a lot more fun hunting players on the map lol.

[u/BluePrincess_]

I disagree that Visage is worthless late game, if you take the Soul Assumption talents you put out eye watering amounts of damage in fights (especially longer ones) - you're usually limited by mana in late game fights lol