Silencer

No, guys—Silencer is not forgotten right now. I hate to say it, but the data tells a completely different story. Hawk Live moved him from B-tier straight to S-tier in the current patch. Strafe named him one of the three best hard supports available. The reason the hero FEELS forgotten is because he is not flashy, not picked in every game, and does not produce the kind of obvious visual chaos that Shadow Shaman's wards or Rubick's stolen spells produce. But the hero who quietly accumulates intelligence across an entire game, applies a harassment curse from range that grows longer every time the enemy support dares to cast a spell, and then presses R at the exact right moment to freeze the entire enemy team in silence while your carry murders them? That hero is winning games. Consistently.

The new Suffer in Silence innate is the mechanic that changes everything about how you think about this hero in the current patch. Silencer now deals more damage to AND takes less damage from silenced targets — scaling at 5% plus 0.5% per hero level for BOTH the bonus damage output and the incoming damage reduction simultaneously. At level twenty, that is 15% more damage dealt to silenced heroes and 15% less damage received from them at the same time. Combine this with the intelligence steal mechanic—one permanent intelligence point stolen from any hero who dies within 925 range, two if they were silenced at the time of death, and additionally one from any hero who dies while debuffed by Silencer regardless of distance—and a late-game Silencer in a game where his team has been winning fights is dealing significantly amplified damage with his Glaives against silenced targets while simultaneously taking reduced damage, AND his intelligence pool is continuing to grow from stolen int, making Glaives hit harder with every hero death near him. It is a compounding loop that makes Silencer more threatening the longer the game goes and the more the enemy team dies near him.

The current meta of intelligence-heavy midlaners and spellcaster supports playing high-mana ability rotations is exactly what Arcane Curse was designed to punish. Cast Arcane Curse on a Leshrac who needs to spam his abilities for lane presence—every ability he casts while the curse is active extends the duration further, dealing more and more damage-per-second tick the longer the extension compounds. A Leshrac who casts four abilities during an active Arcane Curse is sitting under a debuff that has been extended four times and is dealing ongoing damage-per-second through BKB—Arcane Curse explicitly goes through magic immunity on the duration extension and damage ticks. Last Word enforces a silence the moment the target casts anything or automatically triggers after four seconds if they manage to hold themselves back from casting—which means against a target with Last Word active, they are damned if they cast and damned if they do not. And then global silence exists. One button. Every hero on the enemy team stops casting spells simultaneously. In the current meta where Enigma needs Black Hole to win, Tidehunter needs Ravage to survive, and Leshrac needs his entire spell rotation to deal damage—four full seconds of complete global silence turns every threatening cooldown on the enemy team into a wasted window that they will never get back. The Arcane Curse nerf in the current patch removed the 1.25x damage and slow multiplier against silenced enemies—which genuinely did hurt—but Suffer in Silence's innate damage amp on silenced targets partially compensates for the loss in a different way by making Silencer's own attacks more threatening against the heroes he has silenced. He is disgusted with spell-heavy lineups that have no BKB and no reliable dispel—intelligence supports, greedy caster mids, and offlaners who need multiple spell casts to fight effectively. He pairs beautifully with physical damage carries who benefit from Global Silence freezing the enemy team's defensive cooldowns—a Night Stalker or Lifestealer whose targets cannot pop BKB, blink away, or activate defensive actives during four seconds of Global Silence is killing everyone in front of him with zero opposition. Avoid picking him into lineups with heavy BKB users who can operate entirely through the global silence window without needing spells and into teams that can itemize Lotus Orb or Eul's Scepter to dispel Arcane Curse before it has accumulated meaningful duration.