Undying

Strong against strength heroes—and the current meta is absolutely overflowing with them. Wraith King at 54% winrate. Tidehunter in S-tier. Night Stalker carrying games. Sven, Axe, Bristleback, and Centaur Warrunner are all over the offlane. Every single one of these heroes scales off strength—more strength means more HP, more damage, and more survivability. Undying's entire identity as a support is built around taking that strength away from them with Decay and giving it to himself instead, turning their tankiness into his tankiness mid-teamfight. The current meta's dominant strength heroes are not just Undying's targets—they are the specific heroes whose survivability collapses hardest to repeated Decay casts, and the current laning patch that Sportskeeda described as demanding pos 4 lane bullies with lockdown puts Undying in exactly the right spot when paired with the right carry.

Decay steals 4 strength permanently per cast from every enemy hero hit in the AOE, stacking with no cap for its 40-second duration. Against a Wraith King with 250 strength at max items—which translates to over 5000 maximum HP—each Decay cast removes 4 strength and takes 88 HP from him while adding 88 HP to Undying simultaneously. Four Decay casts on a Wraith King remove 16 strength—352 HP off his maximum pool—while giving Undying 352 additional HP. In a sustained teamfight where Undying can spam Decay off its 4-second cooldown at max level, the strength delta between the enemy carry and Undying compounds dramatically throughout the fight duration. Aghanim's Scepter increases the steal to 10 strength per hero per cast—a single Aghanim's Decay on five enemy strength heroes gives Undying 50 temporary strength and takes 50 from each of them simultaneously. The HP difference in the fight after two or three Aghanim's Decays is enormous. Flesh Golem then multiplies Undying's existing strength by 40 to 60 percent—so all those stolen strength stacks are amplified during the ultimate's duration, turning Undying into a genuinely massive HP tank mid-fight that reflects incoming damage through Flesh Golem's damage amplification aura on nearby enemies.

The honest nuance Strafe flagged—"still annoying, just not as strong without a great lane"—is accurate. Undying needs a carry who can follow up on his constant harassment and benefit from the Tombstone's zombie swarm pressure. He is mana hungry, and spamming Decay every four seconds drains resources that need Soul Ring or Arcane Boots to sustain. Tombstone is the ultimate zoning tool in the right position—spawning zombies near every enemy hero in the area—but it dies easily to a single hero who focuses it instead of fighting, and mispositioned tombstones behind your own team rather than in the enemy's path contribute nothing. The innate Ceaseless Dirge gives Undying a free respawn at the fountain once per game, encouraging the kind of early aggressive lane play that his kit is built around—get maximum value from that respawn by being as aggressive as possible in the laning stage, knowing the first death is free. He is disgusting, into strength-heavy lineups where every Decay cast progressively diminishes the enemy's survivability; into physical damage lineups where the Flesh Golem damage amplification aura multiplies your team's right-click output; and into games with extended teamfights where sustained Decay spam over multiple casts creates a massive compounding HP advantage. Avoid him in magic burst lineups that kill Tombstone instantly and kill Undying before he can stack Decay meaningfully, and specifically avoid him in carry heroes who build Eul's Scepter or Heaven's Halberd—cycling Eul's on Undying for six seconds prevents Decay casts during the enemy's most vulnerable kill window.