Slardar

Hoohohoho. Let me tell you something about Slardar that most people do not think about. This hero has been one of the most contested picks in organized professional Dota 2 for years—not because he is broken, not because he is the flashiest hero in the game, but because he does something that almost no other offlaner or mid laner provides simultaneously: global True Sight on any hero he Corrosive Hazes; massive armor reduction that benefits the ENTIRE team's physical damage; and a bash every three attacks that requires no item investment to proc. In the current meta where Lifestealer, Night Stalker, and Ursa are among the most dominant physical damage carries—heroes who right-click everything and need their targets to have reduced armor to maximize damage output—a Slardar running at the enemy carry and applying Corrosive Haze for 18 armor reduction at max level is giving his entire team a free Desolator's worth of armor reduction that applies to every single right-click from every allied hero simultaneously. The carry does not need to build armor reduction. The offlaner does not need to build it. Slardar provides it from his kit at zero item cost.

The Seaborn Sentinel innate is genuinely impactful in fights that involve the river or any water terrain Slardar himself creates. Slithereen Crush creates a puddle that activates Seaborn Sentinel—which means every time Slardar uses his stun in a fight, he generates a water terrain patch granting him bonus armor, bonus attack damage, bonus movement speed, and bonus HP regen for the puddle's duration. The Corrosive Haze trail that Corrosive Hazed enemies leave behind also qualifies as water terrain, meaning if a Hazed enemy walks across the map, Slardar can follow that trail and maintain Seaborn Sentinel bonuses during the chase. Guardian Sprint is now a passive movement speed boost of up to 50% inside the river at max level with 100% slow resistance for the first 2.5 seconds of activation — which means the moment Guardian Sprint activates, Slardar is temporarily impossible to kite with slows. No slow in the game reduces his movement speed for that window. He just runs at maximum speed through Naga Siren's ensnare slow, through Crystal Maiden's Frostbite, and through Rod of Atos roots—the slow resistance literally ignores the movement penalty, and he arrives at the target before they can process what happened.

Corrosive Haze additionally grants Slardar self armor equal to 50% of the TOTAL armor reduction applied to all enemy units currently affected. Apply it to two enemy heroes simultaneously, and Slardar is gaining armor from both reductions simultaneously, stacking independently. This is why the pro scene loves him—a hero who makes his own team's physical damage output dramatically more threatening while simultaneously becoming harder to kill the more enemies he Hazes is a hero whose value compounds with the quality of the team around him. Noticed from Team Yandex that he was named as one of the three best offlane heroes for grinding pubs, where he was sitting at a 52.2% winrate. However, I want to be honest—DM's current patch 7.41a offlane tier list does not include Slardar at all, not even A-tier, and the current meta's dominant offlaners are Bristleback, Doom, Tidehunter, Enigma, and Batrider in the top slots. He is not the easiest blind pick in the current meta. He shines most when the draft has multiple physical damage carries who benefit from Corrosive Haze's armor reduction and when the enemy team has no dispel to remove Corrosive Haze. He is disgusting to invisible heroes—Bounty Hunter, Riki, and Clinkz—because Corrosive Haze applies True Sight on the target, making them permanently visible to your entire team for the ten-second debuff duration. One Corrosive Haze on an invisible hero removes their entire defensive mechanic for ten seconds at a cost of zero gold. He pairs beautifully with physical damage carries who need armor reduction to reach kill thresholds—Night Stalker at night with full attack speed right-clicking a minus-18-armor hero and Lifestealer, whose Feast bonus damage scales on percentage of HP dealt, which benefits from armor reduction, making more of those attacks effective. Avoid picking him into lineups with easy dispels that remove Corrosive Haze immediately—Lotus Orb reflects it back onto Slardar, Manta Style dispels it instantly, and a Phantom Lancer who builds Diffusal Blade or Manta removes the Haze the moment it lands and restores their armor.