Gyrocopter
After serving through a lifetime of wars, upheaval, riots, and revolutions, the brass figured Aurel had seen enough. But in addition to a few trinkets and his considerable pension, the erstwhile engineer left with something far more interesting: a long-forgotten, incomplete schematic for a Gyrocopter, the world's first manned, non-magical flying device. Retiring to the tropical obscurity of the Ash Archipelago with little else but time and money, he set to work building the device. <br><br>As the years wore on and the remains of failed prototypes began to pile up, he began to wonder if mechanical flight was even possible. A decade and a day after his retirement, on a sunny afternoon with a southerly breeze, Aurel sat in his latest attempt bristling with indignation and expectant failure. With a grunt of effort he pulled the ignition cord and covered his head, waiting for the inevitable explosion. However to his great surprise he began to lift and, following a few panicked adjustments, stabilize. Within an hour, he was ducking and weaving with the breeze, level with the gulls, and Aurel found himself filled with the breathless wonder of flight. <br><br>As dusk settled in he set a course back to his workshop, but no sooner had he turned his craft when a cannonball tore through his tailfin. Disentangling himself from the wreckage, he swam toward the nearest piece of land in sight, and cursed to see the ship responsible for the cannonball collecting the debris. Days later, when Aurel returned to his workshop, he set to work on yet another gyrocopter, this one capable of carrying a much heavier, more dangerous payload.
Base STR
22 +2.5
Base AGI
25 +3.4
Base INT
21 +2.4
Move Speed
315
Attack Range
365
Base Armor
1
Attack DMG
18–24
Projectile
3000
Innate Abilities
Afterburner
Gyrocopter gains movement speed for a short duration after damaging an enemy with his attacks or abilities.
DURATION:
3.9
MOVESPEED (HEROES):
1
MOVESPEED (CREEPS):
0.5
Abilities
Rocket Barrage
Cooldown
7 / 6.5 / 6 / 5.5s
Mana
85
Launches a salvo of rockets at nearby enemy units in a radius around the Gyrocopter. Lasts 3 seconds.
RADIUS:
400
ROCKETS PER SECOND:
10
ROCKET DAMAGE:
8 / 14 / 20 / 26
- Rocket Barrage can't hit units Gyrocopter has no vision over.
- Rocket Barrage fired from Homing Missiles do not trigger Afterburner.
Aurel's new craft has an increased payload for rockets, enhancing their rapid-fire capabilities.
Homing Missile
Cooldown
30 / 24 / 18 / 12s
Mana
120 / 130 / 140 / 150
Fires a homing missile to seek the targeted enemy unit. The missile gains speed over time, dealing damage and stunning when it impacts the target. Enemy units can destroy the missile before it reaches its target.
HITS TO DESTROY:
3
TOWER HITS TO DESTROY:
6
STUN DURATION:
1.3 / 1.7 / 2.1 / 2.5
DAMAGE:
90 / 180 / 270 / 360
- Towers do half damage to the missile.
- The crosshair effect is visible to allies only.
- The missile will follow and hit invisible units.
The biggest missile Aurel could possibly attach to his craft, The Bomb has carefully calculated aerodynamics and explosives for maximum impact.
Flak Cannon
Cooldown
25s
Mana
50 / 60 / 70 / 80
Gyrocopter's attacks hit all enemy units in an area around it for a limited number of attacks. Only the main target of attacks will receive attack bonuses such as Critical Strike. Lasts 12 seconds or until the attacks are used.
RADIUS:
1250
MAX ATTACKS:
4 / 5 / 6 / 7
BONUS NIGHT VISION:
200
- Attack range for the primary attack is unchanged.
This newly revamped Gyrocopter has attached enough armaments to assault in a 360 degree radius.
Call Down
Cooldown
75 / 65 / 55s
Mana
150 / 200 / 250
Call down 3 aerial missile strikes that slow and damage enemy units in a target area. Each strike is 500 distance from the previous one.
SLOW DURATION:
4
MISSILE SLOW:
50%
MISSILE DAMAGE:
200 / 350 / 500
RADIUS:
400
TIME BETWEEN STRIKES:
1
- The visual indicator is visible to allies only.
'Bombs Away!'
Talents
Aghanim's Scepter
Side Gunner
Gyrocopter gains a Side Gunner that attacks enemy units in a 700 unit radius every 1.3s with his attack. Side Gunner will attack 2 units at a time while Flak Cannon is active. Prioritizes furthest unit away within its range.
- Side Gunner can attack even while Gyrocopter is disabled.
Aghanim's Shard
Homing Missile
Homing Missiles now constantly fires the current level of Rocket Barrage in a 0 area of effect after 0 second of being cast. This Rocket Barrage prioritizes the Homing Missile target.
Hero Performance
Median across all public matches · OpenDotaForm
43%
Win rate in recent matches
Performance
85%
KDA ratio (kills + assists / deaths)
Laning
41%
Last hits per minute over full game
Farm
57%
Average gold per minute
Fighting
27%
Average kills + assists per match
Experience
72%
Average XP per minute
Strategy
When to Pick Gyrocopter?
Pick Gyrocopter when your team plays 5-man Dota — and I mean REAL 5-man Dota, where everyone groups up, rotates together, and fights as a unit — because right now there is no carry in the game that punishes grouped fighting more brutally and more consistently than Gyro. He is genuinely the strongest carry for this style of play right now, and I am not exaggerating when I say that. Think about it. The Flak Cannon hits EVERYTHING in a 1000 radius simultaneously.
Call Down slows and damages an entire area. Rocket Barrage melts anyone standing next to him. And Homing Missile forces BKBs out of enemy carries at the worst possible moment. Every single spell in his kit is designed to punish teams that stand near each other and fight — and in a meta where 5-man push lineups and grouped teamfight Dota is absolutely everywhere; Gyrocopter is sitting right at the top of the food chain, laughing at everyone.
The current pro item build of Swift Blink into Power Treads into Daedalus into Black King Bar into Satanic tells you everything you need to know about how he is being played—he is not a passive farmer waiting for the late game; he is an aggressive, fight-ready carry who wants to be in the middle of every teamfight dealing obscene AOE damage from the moment his first core item is finished.
He is disgusting in lineups that have strong initiation and crowd control that hold the enemy team together—Tidehunter, Magnus, Enigma, and Dark Seer—because one Ravage or Black Hole into a Gyrocopter with Flak Cannon active is one of the single most demoralizing things the enemy team will ever experience in their entire Dota 2 career.
He thrives against summon and illusion-heavy lineups too because Flak Cannon and Call Down absolutely shred through every unit on the battlefield simultaneously—Lone Druid, Phantom Lancer, and Chen lineups just evaporate when Gyro activates Flak Cannon and starts hitting every single one of their units at once.
He pairs beautifully with Io specifically—the combination of Gyrocopter and Io is one of the most feared duos in the game right now because Tether keeps him alive, the Overcharge attack speed makes Flak Cannon hits come out even faster, and the relocate gives him global initiation that no other carry can replicate.
Avoid picking him into lineups that spread out, split push constantly, and never group up—Nature's Prophet, Clinkz, Tinker—heroes that will just ignore his AOE entirely by never being in the same zip code as each other.
Also feels genuinely terrible into heavy silence lineups that shut him down before he can get his spells off—because a silenced Gyrocopter with Flak Cannon unavailable and Call Down canceled is just a ranged agility hero with mediocre attack range hitting one target at a time and doing absolutely nothing special. And if the enemy has a lot of burst that can focus him down in two seconds before his BKB is online?
Be very careful with your positioning—because Gyro has ZERO innate escape mechanism, no blink, no dash, no teleport, nothing—and if the enemy catches him out of position with no BKB available, he dies faster than almost any other carry in the game.
Tips & common mistakes
- Flak Cannon only lasts for a limited number of attacks and has a thirty-second cooldown. This means you should NEVER be using it to farm creep waves or jungle camps when a teamfight is about to happen in the next thirty seconds — save every single charge for hero combat, because wasting Flak Cannon attacks on creeps and then going into a teamfight with no charges left is one of the most catastrophic mistakes a Gyrocopter player can make.
- Rocket Barrage only hits a single target effectively—it deals full damage to whoever is directly next to Gyro but dramatically less if multiple enemies are nearby splitting the rockets. Use it on the enemy carry in a direct duel or a focused kill, not blindly in the middle of a five-man brawl where the rockets are splitting between ten targets and hitting nobody for meaningful damage.
- Homing Missile is not just a stun—it is a BKB-forcing tool and a harassment device. Throw it at the enemy carry from behind trees or at maximum range where they have zero reaction time, and watch them either burn their BKB to avoid the stun at the worst possible moment or eat a full missile directly in the face. Either outcome is good for you and your team.
- You have NO escape mechanism. I cannot stress this enough. Before you commit to any fight, before you chase any kill, before you walk into any suspicious area of the map—you need to know where you are going when things go wrong, because when things go wrong on Gyrocopter, there is absolutely nothing in your kit to save you except your positioning and your BKB. Always play with an exit in mind.
- Swift Blink is the item that makes Gyrocopter genuinely terrifying in the current meta, and people still underestimate how important it is. The attack speed buff after blinking into a fight combined with Flak Cannon active means your first several hits all deal AOE damage at maximum attack speed simultaneously—the burst damage window in those first three seconds after a Swift Blink into Flak Cannon is one of the highest DPS windows of any carry in the game right now.
- Stop playing Gyrocopter like you are a solo carry hunting individual kills across the map. He is a 5-man carry—his entire identity is built around being in the middle of grouped fights where his AOE matters. If you are split farming and avoiding fights while your team is dying in 4v5 skirmishes, you are playing the wrong hero or playing the hero completely wrong.
Summary
Gyrocopter is the best carry for 5-man Dota right now, and it is not particularly close—no other carry in the game punishes grouped teamfight Dota as consistently, as efficiently, and as brutally as a well-positioned Gyrocopter with Flak Cannon active and a Swift Blink in his inventory.
He farms fast, he fights early, he scales beautifully, and every single ability in his kit becomes exponentially more valuable the more enemies are standing near each other—which in the current meta is happening every single fight.
Draft him into lineups with strong initiation and crowd control, stay grouped with your team at all times, and make the enemy team regret every single decision to cluster together by turning every teamfight into a one-sided massacre of rockets, missiles, and cannon fire raining down from every direction simultaneously.
Just don't pick him and then spend the game split farming alone on the other side of the map thinking you are Medusa building to six slots—because a Gyrocopter that never fights with his team is just an agility hero with a short attack range doing absolutely nothing that the hero was designed to do.
Popular Items
Starting Items
Early Game
Core
Late Game
Popular Neutral Items
Pro Players Known For This Hero
