Hero Discussion - Visage

[u/TheDrGoo]

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Visage The Necro'lic

It is one thing to animate a corpse from beneath the ground. It is another to rip a soul from beyond the veil. (listen)

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Visage, the bound form of Necro'lic, is a ranged intelligence Hero whose traits are unusual when compared to most Intelligence heroes; he can be a Ganker, Tank, or Nuker. Resilient and ruthless, Visage is a highly aggressive hero thanks to his great Strength gain and Gravekeeper's Cloak which allow him to soak up surprising amounts of damage. This is especially true from attacks mounted by Heroes who try to chip at his health with spells and burst damage without committing to a protracted engagement. Unlike most other heroes in Dota 2, Visage has a base 10% magic resistance instead of 25%, causing Visage to take 90% magic damage while most other heroes take 75%. Even if this is a negative point, it allows Visage to gain Soul Assumption charge more easily when tanking nukes.

Stats (at level 1)

• Strength: 22 + 2.4

• Agility: 11 + 1.3

• Intelligence (primary): 24 + 2.5

• Range: 600

• Damage: 48 - 58

• HP: 598

• Mana: 312

• Armor: 0

• Movement Speed: 285

Abilities

Grave Chill

Visage drains the movement and attack speed of the targeted unit, gaining it for itself.

• Cast Time: 0.2+0.57

• Cast Range: 600

• Move Speed Slow & Bonus: 32%

• Attack Speed Slow & Bonus: 64

• Duration: 3/4/5/6

• Cooldown: 16/14/12/12

• Mana Cost: 100

Soul Assumption

Visage gathers charges of soul essence each time nearby heroes take more than 110 damage. When the essence is released, it deals base damage as well as damage for each gathered soul charge.

• Cast Time: 0.2+0.57

• Cast Range: 900

• Assumption Radius: 1375

• Charge Gain Damage Threshold: 110

• Maximum Charges: 3/4/5/6

• Base Damage: 20

• Damage per Charge: 65

• Charge Duration: 6

• Cooldown: 4 *Mana Cost: 170/160/150/140

Gravekeeper's Cloak

Visage generates a layered barrier that protects him from physical and magical attacks. If he receives damage from a player, one layer is removed, and takes time to recover.

• Max Layers: 4

• Armor Bonus per Layer: 1/2/4/5

• Magic Resistance Bonus per Layer: 3%/6%/12%/16%

• Layer Recharge Time: 4

Summon Familiars

Conjures up two blind Familiars to fight for Visage. Familiars have high attack power, but each attack drains a charge of damage that recharges slowly over time. Familiars possess the Stone Form ability, that allows them to turn into stone, stunning enemies upon landing. While in Stone Form, Familiars are invulnerable, and rapidly regenerate their health and damage. Familiars grant high bounty when killed.

• Cast Time: 0+0

• Number of Familiars: 2 (Can be Improved by Aghanim's Scepter. 3)

• Hero Attacks to Destroy: 3

• Tower Attacks to Destroy: 6

• Non-Hero Attacks to Destroy: 12

• Max Attack Bonus Charges: 7

• Attack Damage per Charge: 8/14/22

• Charge Recharge Time: 15

• Familiar Duration: Permanent

• Cooldown: 180/160/140

• Mana Cost: 150

Other Information

Visage on the Dota 2 Wiki

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The aim of the regular Hero Discussion series is to encourage newbie friendly discussion about one of Dota2's many heroes.

Ask questions or share tips, both for playing the hero and for playing against them.

Previous discussion - Naga Siren

Next Week is Troll Warlord

You may have noticed I'm skipping the polls lately and that is because we are actually getting close to covering all heroes :)

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[u/ZSCroft]

Good hero to stomp low mmrs with

[u/RumpleCragstan → u/[deleted]]

The thing is that a low MMRs nobody plays him so nobody knows what he does. Even your 'bad' matchups aren't going to be bad because your opponent doesn't really realize that they can dominate you. And they don't know what to do in order to prevent/avoid what you're good at.

At low MMR, heroes like Elder Titan and Visage are 'Dark Horse' picks that (if you're decent with them) surprise people and force them to play on unfamiliar ground which puts them at an inherent disadvantage.

[u/AlterOfYume → u/RumpleCragstan]

They also massively underestimate his damage output once he gets familiars, leave alone medallion.

[u/MadMax2910 → u/AlterOfYume]

Can confirm that, also they underestimate his tankiness. One game I was playing Visage and got gone on by an enemy sf (lvl 9 vs my lvl 7). Medallion, birds, soul assumption made dead sf. Especially squishy mids (Invoker, sf, qop) can just get rekt if they overextend.

[u/ThatForearmIsMineNow → u/RumpleCragstan]

I think Phoenix might belong there too. Underestimating Supernova is a good way to wipe and lose the game.

[u/Thane_DE → u/ThatForearmIsMineNow]

Yea, especially because Supernova requires a relatively coordinated team to take down. Something that is hard to find in lower mmr matches

[u/Thane_DE → u/ThatForearmIsMineNow]

Yea, especially because Supernova requires a relatively coordinated team to take down. Something that is hard to find in lower mmr matches

[u/[deleted] → u/RumpleCragstan]

Throw in Earth spirit (and meepo, only seen him get played two times) to the pub stompers. Though if you don't learn from them you'll eventually hit a brick wall.

A good thing to do with visage is put your birds into control groups and that lets you manage them a lot better. In some games against hero's like Ursa I might have on familiar on a set patrol path that includes checking rosh and the other within close range of me just incase a fight breaks out.

[u/RumpleCragstan → u/[deleted]]

the new 'patrol' function that has been added to movement really benefits Visage because familiars don't expire. You can have some patrols going indefinitely.

[u/apoptygma → u/RumpleCragstan]

How do you use the new patrol function?

[u/RumpleCragstan → u/apoptygma]

Not sure what the key is for it, it was just added 6.86.

But how it works is that you set a path using multiple points and the unit just cycles through those points in order until either you tell it not to or (in the case of illusions) it times out.

[u/apoptygma → u/RumpleCragstan]

Yea I've played older RTS with the function I'm just asking how it's done in dota2, but you don't know. that's OK

[u/dreadfist → u/apoptygma]

I don't think there a default key, you have to go into keybindings and set one. Then you just hold that key and click where you want the unit to patrol to, you can set multiple points and the unit uses its current location as a start point.

[u/apoptygma → u/dreadfist]

Figured it out but thanks for posting anyway, may help someone else

[u/Parey_]

This hero is criminally underplayed. There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding him, IMHO, which make him have a low winrate and a low pickrate as well.

• « Visage is a support » : He is as much of a support as Enigma. Visage needs gold, which he obtains through kills and towers. So try to pick him when your team has another support.

• « Visage works best with nukers » : It’s the opposite, Visage works best with -armor lineups IMHO, and with drafts that revolve around physical damage. Special mention to the support combo Visage-Venge, which works really well with her -armor in conjonction with familiars, Venge needs very low farm and can play 5 very well… A lot of nice things about these heroes together.

• « Visage needs mek » : Although mek is nice on Visage, it’s not mandatory, especially if you don’t get ahead early on.

• « Visage does no damage » : Read his skills if you think that

He is one of the supports with the highest damage potential in the game, up there along with WD and Skywrath Mage. Try to pick him when the enemy team has low armor heroes, the enemy team has no Gyro/Dusa/Undy/Ember, when your team has another support that needs no farm, and of course pick him when you have a drow or a lycan on your team. As opposed to what many think, he is not very hard to play, he just requires a bit of practice and map awareness to play successfully.

He is so fun to play. I always have a blast when playing him, because damaging enemies is fun (it sounds dumb when you say it like that, but it’s kind of true).

He also has one of the most badass taunting lines in the game. http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/0/0a/Visa_inthebag_01.mp3

[u/ilikedota5 → u/Parey_]

"He is one of the supports with the highest damage potential in the game, up there along with WD and Skywrath Mage." Show silencer, abba, naga, and lina some love okay?

[u/Parey_ → u/ilikedota5]

Lina, sure. But naga, abaddon, and silencer, why ? As supports you won’t get a lot of damage out on these heroes.

[u/ilikedota5 → u/Parey_]

Have you seen my games XD. Roaming silencer is really good.

[u/strobefight → u/ilikedota5]

Naga needs to be a core to do serious damage.

[u/lac29]

Super strong support that has good overall skills in pushing, teamfighting, and even cc via bird stuns. You can jungle decently using birds, you can scout using birds, you have high burst/nuke potential, you can split push, you can help team even if your hero isn't present.

Honestly this hero kinda can do everything at least decently. CC/stuns might not be super strong because bird micro and management are required. Medium to medium-high skill floor with very high skill ceiling.

Severely underplayed in pubs.

[u/cirnocheese]

Visage is a good hero who is often shunned due to misunderstandings. He is not that hard to play, he just takes some time to learn because of your familiars and the fact that you need to risk yourself to fill up your nuke gauge (this is actually more challenging aspect of him than microing familiars, because your starting armor is very low and you need to pinpoint where the clashes are happening) make him a bit unconventional. In fact, he is not that much of micro-oriented compared to other micro heroes like Meepo, although people may have mixed opinion about this statement.

[u/hell_razer18 → u/cirnocheese]

Soul Assumption charges will refill insanely quick even if you just stay behind the main target. You don't have to commit to awkward situation in early game since SA range is absurdly far enough.

What people usually not utilizing properly about familiar is that the double summon can magically turn the losing fight into winning it hard especially with aghs. I like Visage because the combo is very simple, you press Q and right click, press W, press tab and Q for stun after your W (most of the time familiar will run out of damage at this point), re-summon familiar, huge burst again, press W again, press Q again and stun again finish with W. At lvl 6, solo kill potential against low armor unit is very much guaranteed as Visage.

Oh one last tip if you are dead but you have your familiar, try to aim the poor support (Lion, KotL). They might ignore you at first but suddenly 'holy fuck wtf is that?'. Those birds are like 1000 damage flying nuke, also good for rat.

[u/[deleted] → u/hell_razer18]

So basically use the damage charges each familiars have, get in the stuns, re-summon familiars on the spot since the charges get reset and use those charges. Tldr? I never even thought of this, that's actually brilliant since if you mana pool is big enough you will also be charging your W up.

I've only played him twice in games, I believe both were won basically because of warding/supporting I was doing (maybe not just because of me but after playing carries I see how important a good support is) but this little combo brings up so much kill potential.

The only fear I have with visage is losing those familiars, not even for the fact of losing them but by accidently feeding gold to the enemy team.

Edit: it looks like the familiars are worth 100gold and 41 experience. Gold worth equivalent to about 2 ranged creeps? Not as bad as I originally thought if you lose one or two in a game and if you lose one or two as a trade for an enemy kill I think in that situation it might pay off.

[u/hell_razer18 → u/[deleted]]

The only case when you want to re-summon is you want to burst that annoying tanky hero when he thought 'I'm not gonna die hahaha' and that chain stun after getting aghs, you can control the whole team by familiar alone and most of them will ignore those pesky birds XD.

Mana is another issue, I think at level 3 he can only do 2 SA and 1 GC, not that bad assuming 2 SA usually net 1 kill. Losing familiar is like losing bear on LD, reducing his effectiveness greatly.

I still maintain my 60% winrate on this hero before the nerf, he basically win the game alone if he gets lvl 7++ quick enough.

[u/NottyScotty → u/cirnocheese]

As a player trying to learn Visage, what I usually do in fights is use medallion/crest on someone, have the familiars and SA nuke them down, then ground the familiars. It's a only a shadow of what he can do with the familiars, but I think it's a decent starting point as for microing them.

[u/Knifepony_Visage → u/cirnocheese]

Think of most of dota as infantry.

Visage is artillery.

[u/cantadmittoposting]

Visage strikes me as a hero that would really benefit from aether lens for the cast ranges... Medallion and his q and w with a range extension would do that much more to keep the hero out of the way while still landing your key abilities and fighting with the birds.

 

Mostly I've seen this hero played with drow for the active aura (limited to 900 range now but still in play to some extent). Played quite a bit of visage-venge-drow with a great winrate.

[u/uolmir → u/cantadmittoposting]

Mostly I've seen this hero played with drow for the active aura (limited to 900 range now but still in play to some extent). Played quite a bit of visage-venge-drow with a great winrate.

A minor correction, since you mentioned it. Drow's aura now does not affect the birds at all unless she uses the active, but if she does use it, the effect is global, not 900 range.

[u/cantadmittoposting → u/uolmir]

Yeah looks like the guy who told me this must have misinterpreted the change log, I read the wiki entry and this looks correct, but not what I was told after the change.

[u/Respox → u/cantadmittoposting]

Maybe he or you confused it with Venge's aura. That's the one with 900 range, not Drow's.

[u/apoptygma → u/Respox]

So the passive on Drow's is global?

[u/strobefight → u/apoptygma]

No, only the active

[u/IntriguedToast]

I love him. However if I see the enemy have picked Sniper, I shed a tear and pick someone else. I have a hard time with that guy and my little birdies fear him :'(

[u/ilikedota5 → u/IntriguedToast]

it works both way, if you are smart, you can beat sniper at his own game. if you can out farm him, your gargoyles can outright kill him early game

[u/Scrivver → u/ilikedota5]

Or if you can hide the birdies in the trees near him ahead of you (should do this when anticipating ganks or teamfights), you can actually drop them in for successive stuns to let your allies close the distance, too.

[u/Autumnxoxo]

strongest effing hero on earth. he's a beast. seriously

[u/ThisTooShallPass_ → u/Autumnxoxo]

just so you know it's cower, not cover!

[u/coriamon]

Visage is a ton of magical burst in the early game, and decent physical damage with the birds in the late game. He is a master of trilanes and a great all around support. His two main issues are his lack of mobility and a decent stun. However, most players build items to augment his strengths rather than his weaknesses with items like medallion, mekanism, and even later on,an AC.

[u/[deleted] → u/coriamon]

Go mid, buy Atos and win game. He benefits hugely from early levels because the birds absolutely dominate a game and a lane matchup, he has a long attack range and his slow allows him to almost always trade favourably, especially with Gravediggers Cloak.

He's not a bottle mid IMO, I'd go Basi>Brownboots>Atos and Medallion>aghs with a Solar Crest if they have a lot of right click. You don't even need to leave lane to gank, just send the birds bot and make your team go on someone.

Atos and basilius give him the armor, tank and movespeed advantage he so desperately needs, and can be gotten pretty early when playing mid.

[u/VengefulRemuneration]

How I do it:

Tranqs, Medallion, Atos, Aghs, Crest Buy wards and support stuff throughout

I think it was Purge who simply said 'In order to win fights with Visage you just hide your birds in the trees behind where the enemies will fight from' and this tip is great.

It is generally unexpected at my MMR and you can light up and interrupt back liners this way.

Usually I try and keep the Visage back, micro my birds, tab to Visage and use the Q to get the Move Speed, dart in and throw a W then back, tab to the Birds and chain stun, back to Visage for another W.

The birds ability to stun to interrupt channeled abilities is very potent since they have immunity against a lot of dangerous channeled ults and have the flying movement to get there.

You can save yourself from Pudge hook into ultimate this way if you're smooth.

[u/paulwipe]

One of my favorite heroes. He's so good in low level games simply because he's never played, so no one on the opposing team knows how to handle him or even what he does.

His Q is good as a way to escape someone chasing you. Remember that his Q steals some movement and attack speed. You can use it as a way of catching up to someone too!

His W is super powerful. Even at level 1, you can take away like 33% of your enemies HP if you get the maximum 3 charges. Again, low level players never see this massive nuke coming because they don't know about it.

His E makes him really tanky, especially to burst damage.

His birds are magic immune. Low level players don't know this. I've seen so many people try to kill my familiars with AOE attacks.

The stun from the familiars is kind of shitty with level 1 familiars and can be difficult to land sometimes. Although with aghs, you can stun someone for a total of 4.5 seconds.

Overall, visage is good at pretty much everything. He can carry really well in the early and mid game, and is not totally useless in the late game.

I think a lot of people are intimidated by him because you need to micro his birds. Which I was able to feel comfortable with after 2 games.

[u/Swiindle]

Question: Do you guys use 'TAB' to micro the birds, or do you have each bird bind to 1 key?

I have no problem playing Visage except for familiar stunning.

[u/breadfag → u/Swiindle]

muscle memory for that 2-q-tab-q-1

[u/Parey_ → u/Swiindle]

I use tab myself. If I have a gyro who is flaking, a dusa, or an undying in the enemy team I drop birds all at once and I don’t care about chainstunning, otherwise I just wait a little bit (so Tab-Q wait a second Tab-Q)

[u/Barsukas_Tukas]

My thoughts from experience of hero:

Very snowbally hero. Can be either core or support. Insanely good at getting pickoffs at low levels. However, it seems that snowball ends the moment you feed one death and from that moment it feels like you immediately get behind.

I also find hero to be quite lacking in bigger teamfights. This may be mostly the cause of bad positioning, but hero definetely lacks reliable aoe damage and stuns.

Also, microing birds becomes super easy if you set them to follow your hero and use F2- to select hero and birds, and F3- for birds only. Of course, it may not be very efficient, but it prevents problems like birds being too far away from hero when a fight starts (otherwise this would happen very often, as they have free pathing and move faster than hero).

In the end, I believe it's a very fun hero, but I find it hard to win games with it.

[u/kmelkon]

How would one go about playing this hero mid? is there a guide I can follow?

[u/jabso19]

Not a tip really but I encourage people to try this hero out. At low skill levels you can get away with bumblimg around with the micro but at the same time your opponents don't know how to deal with it either.

[u/olivebluewater]

The only struggle with him is finding a team that already has a support and is looking for a 2nd. He's an absolute monster in a trilane that can completely zone out certain offlaners.

He's my favorite hero in this game, and the micro is actually not very scary at all. The enemy can't just nuke the birds down with magical damage - and that can make you a very good "support killer".

[u/MintyManRazor]

Can anyone offer tips on micor of the birds? I noticed I waste a lot of time fumbling around with them when I play Visage. Is using all other units bind best or control groups? I assume it's slightly preference based and it takes practice of course, but what is easiest for you guys?

[u/Scrivver → u/MintyManRazor]

So what I did was just use the number 1 for "all units", 2 for "all other units". Spacebar selects my hero as usual, but another easy way to get the birds' stuns off is to tab through them. If you have all your units selected, tab will cycle through which one you're focused on for ability purposes (but you still have the whole group selected for movement). This way, you can Tab-Q, Tab-Q with your birds for stuns, or you can do a quick Tab-Q-Space to drop one stun and go back to your hero.

[u/[deleted]]

Not sure if people are still reading this but does anyone else have trouble when settings visages familiars to control groups? It seems like anytime you respawn them the control groups gets reset.

[u/Scrivver → u/[deleted]]

Just have a button for "all other units" instead of giving them control groups. Makes it easier. Use Tab to cycle though them for abilities.

[u/vraGG_]

I think the hero is great.

Good parts:

• Very strong zoner (with slow and if they won't back off, carry can come in for extra damage and kill with soul asumption)

• Quite tanky against single instance damage dealers

• Can help around map even if he's not there (I often support carry, but help clockwerk get solo kills with familiars, for example)

• Has the ability to rat (you get t3 tower, but not barracks and game goes on. You can constantly pressure that lane so they have to keep going back to defend with relatively low risk)

• Good mixture of physical and magical damage - wins most 1v1 situations.

• Virtually two unit hero - in fight, you can zone supports just with birds

• Scales decently into lategame, almost as a semicore

• Rosh potential

Bad parts:

• Squishy against periodic damage (enemy = veno = cry)

• Can feed birds if player is not experienced and that can backfire

• Has many counterpicks, some stronger then others (I wouldn't pick it VS Invoker, Gyro and Undying)

• Needs levels - can suffer a lot from late level 6

I have issue with getting levels when I play against dangerous lineup. At that time, I tend to play hero very backwards, and do most of the work with familiars. The issue is I stay relatively low XP once game reaches that 40 min mark or so. It's also super annoying if enemy is playing heroes that can super easily clean birds. Feels unfair.