Upgrade
Harpoon
Stats
Abilities
Draw Forth
When targeting an enemy, fire a harpoon at them, that pulls you and the target closer together, up to 35% of the distance between you and your target. If the caster is melee, the hero and target are always pulled to within melee distance of each other. Targeting a tree always pulls you all the way to that tree.
Echo Strike
Causes melee attacks to attack twice in quick succession. The double attacks apply a 100% movement slow for 1 seconds on the first strike. Echo Strike cooldown: 5s
Components
Strategy
Why Buy Harpoon?
There is a specific problem that melee cores have in Dota 2 that no amount of damage items solves: the gap. A ranged carry kites you forever. A support force staffs their teammate out of your reach. A hero blinks at the last second. You have full stamina, full health, and you are running after someone who will never let you close the distance. Harpoon is the item that ends that problem permanently. Press it, and the physics of the fight change—you and your target are pulled toward each other simultaneously, meeting somewhere in the middle. On a melee hero, they come within your attack range no matter where they started. There is no blink out, no forced staff dodge, no kiting away—the pull happens to both of you at the same time.
That is the Draw Forth active, and it is a displacement tool that belongs in a category next to Blink Dagger and Force Staff but does something neither of those items does. Blink puts you at the target. Force Staff pushes someone away. The harpoon pulls you both together, which means the target cannot escape by moving in any direction—the pull closes the gap regardless of where they run during it. Against a ranged hero who has been kiting you all game from 600 units away, Draw Forth fires, you meet in the middle, and now they are within your attack range, and you have your full double-attack Echo Strike swing waiting.
The Echo Strike passive is the second job, and it is genuinely powerful on melee carries even outside of the Draw Forth combo. Every 5 seconds, your first attack triggers a double hit with a 100% movement slow for 1 second on the proccing attack, immediately followed by a second attack with massively boosted attack speed. That slow plus double damage window at the start of every engagement is a persistent DPS and chase advantage that stacks naturally with any hero who has on-hit effects—bash procs, stacks of any kind, or lifesteal. And the 490 attack speed burst on the second swing means your follow-up lands almost instantly before the target has processed what happened.
The 7.41 addition of tree targeting is genuinely useful and undervalued. You can now fire Harpoon at a tree and yank yourself to it, destroying all trees along the path. This gives melee cores a movement tool in addition to the gap-closer—use it to escape over cliffs, to reposition through forests, or to close the gap on a target who has run into the trees. It does not close the gap on an enemy in this mode, but a melee carry suddenly having free movement through tree terrain is a real change in how fights around high ground and jungle can be played.
When to Buy Harpoon?
The second or third items on melee strength carriers and offlaners who are losing fights because they cannot stay on a target—Tiny, Sven, Chaos Knight, Magnus, Void Spirit, and Wraith King. The timing is 18 to 28 minutes, after your core fighting stats are in place and the gap-closing problem has become the primary bottleneck in your effectiveness. If you are completing full item rotations in fights and winning comfortably, something like Blink Dagger or Armlet may be higher priority. But if you are repeatedly watching a ranged carry walk away from your full damage window and there is nothing you can do about it, harpoon is the answer.
The draft signal is mobility on the enemy team. Windranger with Windrun, Phantom Lancer creating distance through illusions, Sniper who needs 850 attack range to feel safe, and any ranged core who has been designated to kite you specifically. Against those heroes, Harpoon converts every fight into a guaranteed engagement window for as long as the 19-second cooldown allows it.
Where you skip it: ranged heroes. Echo Strike does not work on them—the entire passive is melee-only. Draw Forth still works on ranged heroes in its 35% pull-toward-each-other mode, which is weaker than the melee version and covers less distance. Ranged carries who want a gap-closer should be looking at Hurricane Pike or other mobility options instead. And against a physical carry who is content to stand next to you and trade hits anyway—a Tiny or a Wraith King—you do not have a gap problem to solve, and Harpoon's slot is better used for damage or survivability.
Tips & common mistakes
- · Draw Forth does NOT disable the pulled units—neither you nor the target can be stunned, slowed, or prevented from acting during the pull. Both heroes can still cast spells, use items, and attack while being yanked toward each other. This means a smart enemy can pop BKB, use Force Staff, or cast abilities during the pull animation. If you are using Harpoon to initiate, fire abilities immediately as the pull begins—do not wait until you land.
- · The Draw Forth projectile is disjointable. A Blink Dagger, a Phase Boots dodge, or a Windrun activation—anything that destroys projectiles will negate the pull before it connects. This is important to know because if the enemy has a reliable disjoint, your 19-second cooldown and 50 mana are gone for nothing. Use the time harpoon for moments when the enemy has already committed their escape tools, not as the opener that forces a disjoint to fire.
- · On MELEE heroes, Draw Forth always pulls the target to melee distance—not 35% of the distance like it does for ranged. You do not end up halfway between your starting positions; you end up right in front of each other within attack range. This is categorically stronger than the ranged version and is one of the core reasons. Harpoon is fundamentally a melee hero item.
- · The tree-targeting in 7.41 destroys trees along your entire pull path to the target tree. This is a genuine escape tool from situations where you are cornered in the jungle or near high ground—fire it at a distant tree and yank yourself out of the area instantly. It is also the only way to use Harpoon as a mobility tool rather than a gap-closer, which opens up repositioning plays that were not possible before.
- · Against Roshan, Draw Forth only moves you—Roshan cannot be displaced. If you fire Harpoon at Roshan, you fly into him, not the other way around. This can be useful for a melee hero who wants to reposition quickly to the Rosh pit, but do not expect to pull Roshan anywhere useful.
- · Echo Strike's cooldown cannot be reset by Refresher Orb or Rearm. The 5-second cooldown is bound to its own custom system completely separate from normal cooldown manipulation. Invoker with Rearm, Tinker — none of them can reset Echo Strike. Plan your burst windows around this — after the double attack fires, you have 5 seconds before the next one, and nothing you do changes that.
- · The 100% movement slow from Echo Strike only applies on the FIRST attack of the double hit, not the second. The second attack benefits from the massively boosted attack speed (490 temporary attack speed) but does not independently slow. This means the slow and the second fast attack are delivered nearly simultaneously on most heroes—the target is briefly rooted in place by the slow just long enough for the second swing to connect before they can move.
Summary
Harpoon solves the problem of kiting by making kiting physically impossible—when you fire Draw Forth, both heroes move toward each other, and the melee carry always ends up within attack range. The Echo Strike passive layers a double hit and a movement slow on every engagement opener every 5 seconds, and the 7.41 tree-targeting upgrade adds a genuine repositioning dimension that makes the item more than a one-trick gap-closer.
Buy it when a ranged core is beating you by simply walking away; use it the moment their escape tools are on cooldown, and fire your abilities during the pull—not after you land.
Lore
A perfect solution for the flight of foes.