Warlock
As Chief Curator and Head of Acquisitions for the Arcane Archives of the Ultimyr Academy, Demnok Lannik was tireless in his pursuit of lost, rare and forbidden tomes. No cursed temple was so foreboding, no cavern path so treacherous, that any concern for his own survival could dissuade him from entering if rumors hinted that some pamphlet of primordial lore might still survive in its depths. However, so often did his investigations trigger the wrath of protector entities, that he finally found it necessary to master the arts of magic. He bent himself to learning sorcery with the same thorough obsessiveness that marked his quest for incunabula, becoming the most powerful Warlock of the Academy in less time than most practitioners required to complete a course of undergraduate work. Almost as an afterthought, he carved a staff of Dreadwood and summoned into it a captive spirit from the Outer Hells. And anticipating the day when he will have recovered every last lost spellbook, he has commenced writing his own Black Grimoire. It will undoubtedly be instructive.
Base STR
22 +2.4
Base AGI
10 +1
Base INT
25 +3.1
Move Speed
300
Attack Range
600
Base Armor
1
Attack DMG
27–37
Projectile
1200
Innate Abilities
Eldritch Summoning
Whenever an enemy unit dies while afflicted by one or more of Warlock's abilities, a minor imp is summoned that lasts for 15 seconds and explodes on death. Imps will automatically seek out nearby units, favoring fatally bonded heroes, and will explode when reaching their prey.
IMP HEALTH:
5
EXPLOSION DAMAGE:
20
Abilities
Fatal Bonds
Cooldown
42 / 34 / 26 / 18s
Mana
120 / 130 / 140 / 150
Binds several visible enemy units together, causing a percentage of the damage dealt to one of them to be felt by the others.
ENEMIES BOUND:
6
SHARED DAMAGE:
15 / 18 / 21 / 24%
DURATION:
18
BIND RADIUS:
700
- The shared damage type is the same as the type of damage inflicted.
- Damage done by this ability is considered reflected damage. Reflected damage does not provide any lifesteal and cannot be reflected.
An ancient incantation that links the vital energies of multiple lifeforms into one collective body.
Shadow Word
Cooldown
15 / 14 / 13 / 12s
Mana
110 / 120 / 130 / 140
Warlock whispers an incantation, casting a spell on a unit that makes it deal damage to nearby enemy units and heal nearby ally units. Target Unit will also heal or be damaged depending on whether they are ally or enemy.
HEAL/DAMAGE:
15 / 25 / 35 / 45
DURATION:
10
EFFECT RADIUS:
225
Demnok's arcane arts have a myriad of uses, allowing them to be powerful friendly enchantments or damaging curses.
Upheaval
Cooldown
60 / 50 / 40 / 30s
Mana
100
CHANNELED - A powerful slowing and damaging current that grows stronger as it's channeled. Lasts up to 10 / 12 / 14 / 16 seconds. Enemies are slowed for 1 second after leaving the area or the spell ends.
RADIUS:
575 / 600 / 625 / 650
SLOW PER SECOND:
11 / 14 / 17 / 20%
MAX SLOW:
55 / 70 / 85 / 100%
DAMAGE PER SECOND:
10
MAX DAMAGE:
35 / 60 / 85 / 110
MAX CHANNEL DURATION:
10 / 12 / 14 / 16
- The slow increase is based on length of the channel, not the duration an enemy was standing in the area.
Demnok manipulates space-time, impairing entire armies.
Chaotic Offering
Cooldown
165s
Mana
200 / 400 / 600
Summons a Golem from the depths, stunning enemies for 0.8 seconds. The Golem lives 60 seconds, takes reduced damage from spells, has increased Slow Resistance, has Permanent Immolation and Flaming Fists on attack.
SUMMON BLAST RADIUS:
600
GOLEM HEALTH:
1500 / 2250 / 3000
GOLEM DAMAGE:
100 / 150 / 200
GOLEM MOVEMENT SPEED:
320 / 340 / 360
GOLEM HEALTH REGEN:
25 / 50 / 75
GOLEM GOLD BOUNTY:
100 / 150 / 200
GOLEM ARMOR:
8 / 12 / 14
GOLEM SLOW RESISTANCE:
60%
- This ability destroys trees in its area of effect.
Demnok unleashes the captive spirit in his Dreadwood staff, causing destruction in enemy ranks.
Talents
Aghanim's Scepter
Chaotic Offering
Calls 0 Golems.
Aghanim's Shard
Upheaval
While channeling, Warlock spawns a minor imp every 2 seconds that lasts for 15 seconds and explodes dealing damage to all enemies around them upon death.
Hero Performance
Median across all public matches · OpenDotaForm
50%
Win rate in recent matches
Performance
47%
KDA ratio (kills + assists / deaths)
Laning
20%
Last hits per minute over full game
Farm
48%
Average gold per minute
Fighting
15%
Average kills + assists per match
Experience
56%
Average XP per minute
Strategy
When to Pick Warlock?
Here is the honest truth about Warlock that nobody wants to say out loud: at ESL One Birmingham 2026, he was one of the LEAST effective heroes at the pro level. CyberScore listed him alongside Luna and Ember Spirit as the worst performers of the tournament. 41 picks, 34.15% win rate. That number is genuinely painful to look at. And yet—and this is the thing most guides will completely skip past—in pub Dota on patch 7.41b right now, he is an absolute menace in the right conditions, with Ancient Apparition boasting a 59.50% win rate specifically against Warlock lineups, which tells you people are scared enough of him to specifically counter-draft him. That gap between pro play and pub play tells you something very important about what kind of hero Warlock actually is.
He is a DRAFT-DEPENDENT hero. More than almost any other support in the game, Warlock's value swings wildly depending on whether the enemy team is playing into him or not. At ESL One Birmingham, teams knew exactly how to handle him — spread out, pick heroes that don't cluster, and simply refuse to group up in ways that let Fatal Bonds do what it does. In pub Dota at your MMR bracket, most enemy teams do NOT play like that. They group up. They run in together. They don't respect the bonds. And when they don't respect them, Fatal Bonds becomes one of the most disgusting damage amplification tools available to any support in Dota 2 at any skill level. Here is what Fatal Bonds actually does that most players don't fully appreciate: it links up to six units and shares 24% of any damage dealt to one of them across ALL the others. That means if your Sven cleaves an enemy carry for 600 damage, every single bonded hero takes 144 bonus damage simultaneously. This is not a utility ability. This is a teamfight-warping ability that turns every AoE damage source your team has into a miniature Black Hole outcome. Every cleave. Every Laguna Blade. Every Wyvern ult. Every Gyrocopter Flak Cannon. All of it chains.
This is why Warlock is the hero you pick when your team has HEAVY AoE physical or magic damage. Sven is the perfect example—God's Strength plus War Cry plus a full cleave build means that Fatal Bonds on a clustered fight literally multiplies the DPS output of your carry by a factor that makes no mechanical sense without seeing it happen in real time. Enigma is another one—Black Hole into Chaotic Offering means the enemy team is stunned twice in a row while bonded, and Midnight Pulse is dealing damage to every bonded hero simultaneously. Tidehunter's Ravage has the same effect. Mars's Arena of Blood walls enemies into a box, and Warlock drops everything on top. Any hero that creates forced clustering or has massive AoE damage doesn't just pair well with Warlock — they turn him into a game-ending support.
And yes—Chaotic Offering cancels Black Hole. This is worth repeating because it saves games. If Enigma uses Black Hole on your team and you cast Chaotic Offering, the Golem drops and the 0.8-second AoE stun that PIERCES BKB hits every hero in the Black Hole simultaneously and breaks it. Professional players know this. Most pub Enigmas do not. This interaction alone makes Warlock worth picking for any team that has Enigma as their primary initiation tool, because you will shut down their entire game plan with one button press.
Avoid picking Warlock into lineups with strong physical burst, high mobility, and heroes that care nothing about crowd control. Lifestealer is the nightmare matchup—Open Wounds removes the benefit of your heal in team fights, Infest means he shows up when it is already too late to react, and he does not care about your Golem at all because he just Infests it. Doom is equally miserable—Doom silences YOU, not your carry, which means your entire contribution to the next sixty seconds is standing there looking at your abilities on cooldown while the game falls apart. And be extremely careful about picking Warlock into lineups that spread out entirely—heroes like Nature's Prophet, Phantom Lancer, and Naga Siren with illusions everywhere mean your Fatal Bonds is either hitting summons and illusions instead of real heroes or the enemy team is physically never grouped enough for the ability to hit more than two targets.
Tips & common mistakes
- Fatal Bonds does NOT have a maximum range for the damage to propagate once it has been cast. This means you can cast it in the early skirmish, disengage completely, and teleport away, and the bonds will STILL transfer damage between heroes as long as the duration holds. Most pub warlocks think they need to stay near the fight for the ability to keep working. They do not. Cast your bonds, get to safety, and let your teammates deal the damage.
- · The Golem from Chaotic Offering has a 0.8-second AOE stun that PIERCES spell immunity. Read that again. It stuns through BKB. This is Warlock's most powerful tool in the late game when the enemy team has bought BKBs specifically to counter your team's magic damage lineup—your Golem says no. Position yourself before the fight starts so Chaotic Offering drops directly on top of the clustered enemy team, not in an empty corner of the map where the stun hits nothing.
- · Most pub Warlocks build Refresher Orb and immediately use it right after Chaotic Offering. This is wrong. The correct sequence against a team with BKBs is to cast Chaotic Offering to stun them and break their positioning, LET the Golem do damage and proc its AoE stun on attacking, THEN use Refresher Orb and cast Fatal Bonds—because now their BKBs are either expiring or they have already used them on the first Golem, and you land bonds on heroes who are no longer spell immune. If you bond BEFORE the BKBs are down, the damage transfer does not function properly against protected targets.
- · Upheaval is one of the most slept-on abilities in Warlock's kit at average MMR. Nobody respects it because it starts slow, but at full channel, it reaches an absolutely brutal movement speed reduction that makes it nearly impossible to escape. The correct usage is not to channel it in the middle of the fight where someone will interrupt you—it is to cast it in the DIRECTION enemies will flee AFTER your Golem stuns them. Cast it behind them. They run into it after the stun ends and are suddenly moving at near-zero speed while your golem's immolation and your teammates clean everything up.
- · Shadow Word heals OR damages. Most pub players pick one and stick to it. The correct approach in the laning phase is to use it aggressively on enemies whenever it is safe to do so — the damage over time disables their Blink Dagger for the full duration, which means any enemy offlaner planning to Blink-initiate after you cast Shadow Word on them literally cannot do it for eleven seconds. This is map control. And if the heal radius of 225 catches a creep wave, you deal damage to those creeps too—it is not just a single-target ability in proximity.
- · NEVER let your Golem die to the enemy team if you can avoid it. Each Golem kill gives the enemy 100 gold, which is effectively a kill bounty for doing nothing except hitting a summon. When the Golem is about to die and the fight is lost, manually move it into neutral creep camps or under your towers. Sacrifice it to something that does not give your enemies gold. Most pub warlocks watch their golem get killed and shrug. The best Warlock players micromanage their Golem actively throughout the fight.
Summary
Warlock at ESL One Birmingham 2026 had a 34.15% win rate at the professional level, and that tells you exactly what happens when elite teams know how to play against him—they spread out, they don't group up, and suddenly the hero that was supposed to warp teamfights is standing in the back doing nothing.
But here is what that number does NOT tell you: in pub Dota on this patch, against teams that DO group up, against carries that DO have massive AoE damage, and against lineups that DO have Enigma or Tidehunter or Sven—Warlock is an absolute freight train that ends fights in two seconds flat. He is the most conditional support in the game. He either makes every teamfight feel completely one-sided, or he does literally nothing.
Your job before you lock him in is to be honest with yourself about the draft—does the enemy team cluster? Does your carry have cleave or AoE? Can you survive long enough to counter-initiate instead of initiating first? If the answer to all three is yes, pick Warlock, build Aghanim's into Refresher, wait for the moment the enemy groups up, and then make every decision they made about their draft look like the worst mistake of their lives.
Popular Items
Starting Items
Early Game
Core
Late Game
Popular Neutral Items
Pro Players Known For This Hero
