Maintaining late game effectiveness of ophelia?

[XrBob]

Today I played single draft and came up with wildsoul, ophelia, and rampage. I went with ophelia, she's very difficult but it seems like she has potential. I went 3/2/6 so it was ok though I ran into some problems.

Early game was pretty good, just jungle and gank. Jungling is pretty easy, command some good creeps and just focus them all on the others. Ganking went well, come up from behind, tab+q to minotaur as well as use ophelia's q skill on the approach. Beyond early game was a problem though.

I was hesitant to be with the team when I was missing some creeps, if I only had 1 or none. I had homecoming stones as well, but wasn't sure if I should go help at a tower as I couldn't bring my creeps with me. Her q and w skills are great, I'd just be lacking my commanded creeps though.

Also, what's the best way to keep them alive? I would hesitate to push if I didn't have any as I wanted to hunt our jungle for a minotaur and wolf commando or something, so I was often lagging behind.

Items, I basically went courier , ward, pretenders crown + totem and the beginning, then plated greaves, astrolabe, and nome's. I've heard staff of the master is good though.

Any recommended ophelia guides?

Edit: Also, I've seen some assign numbers to their creatures such as 1 is ophelia, 2 is minotaur, 3 is wolf and so on. Press the number to get the command. That sounds like a good idea, just that I currently have my items assigned to 1-6. What is a good way to assign items to? Is the work involved learning ophelia worth it?

[Forfeit]

Aura stacking can be fun if you have good players and good heroes on your team, but your often better off with a couple of talisman/bracers, boots, then a SotM rush.

She is the #1 Staff benefactor, by far. Global 200/300/400 heal + 100% heal to minions on a 30 second cooldown is just ridiculous.

Your job as Ophelia is to make sure it doesn't drag to late game. You're not War Beast or even Tempest where you need to rice the jungle until you're farmed (or have blink), you should be ganking and pushing towers interspersed with killing neuts.

My best Ophelia games are the ones where I'm in the jungle as little as possible.

If it gets late game, your Q skill is your best asset.

[Unyazi]

sorry for hijack but how would one use her 2nd skill effectively. i usually pick it up around levels 10-15 but only cos i think i should not cos i know how to use it well.

but on topic, definitely nomes/sotm, ward *****in, gank/push early, pure support late eg alpha wolf and ice ogre for their aura/armor as the stuns become less useful later imo

[Ricotta]

I know people say it's unreliable but i save ophelias 2nd skill for bursting with her first skill. The tp takes too long on heroes to be useful, but i do save my creeps sometimes. Usually i find the only place it is used is nukes right after i slow

[Unyazi]

oh, i should read tooltips, i thought it was a saving mechanism :S

[coolstorybro]

I've never played but I have seen a Ophelia that used a codex and her nuke to destroy my whole team... along with some goatars.

[Ricotta]

oh, i should read tooltips, i thought it was a saving mechanism :S

It is, it can teleport allied heroes and creeps. But by the time i usually get the teleport off on an allied hero it takes about 5 seconds....

Ophelia is one of my fav heroes, generally building support items like any other hero works fine with her. Also using her first ability on your team's target can absolutely destroy him....

I usually build courier -> astrolab -> plated greaves -> nomes -> Sotm

the heal aura from the refreshing ornament is very nice for farming in the beginning. Sometimes i forgo the nomes for an abyssal skull if my team is extremely melee heavy.

[Kudryavka]

Her best scaling comes through Ice Ogres, Wolf Commanders, and Minotaurs. The Ice Ogre's shield is actually really, really good, almost as good as Plague Rider's. Wolf Commanders have a 30% damage aura, though the 500 range can be a problem. Minotaurs are the standard Ophelia creep, and chainstunning never loses effectiveness, though doing it effectively in a teamfight is a lot harder than just coming out of the forest behind someone. Snotter Bosses also have an MS aura, which makes it easier to chase, but they're obviously fragile as hell. If you're really struggling to stay relevant in teamfights later on, you can grab a couple Vagabonds, Catmen, or Vultures to clear waves and push a 2nd lane while your team is pushing another. This way you might be able to get a tower even if your team loses a teamfight, which is a nice consolation prize.

[RogerDodger]

Wolf Commanders are 100% useless since auto attacks only start happening once all the AoE ****fest is done (so your wolf is dead).

The best way to scale with Ophelia is to buy a hex / puzzlebox and not piss your money away on a Staff of the Masters.

[_1zabest]

Buy nome's wisdom, buy staff of the master, get ice ogre creep, then whatever other aura creeps you can find.

ice ogre's shield is no joke, have it stand behind your team so it doesnt die to aoes. Attack speed / movespeed / damage auras are all win too.

with nomes + SOTM you can spamm 400hp heals every 30 seconds (500hp to yourself) = win

[UNBR34K4BL3]

ophelia will never be powerful late game. you need to end the game at around ~30 minute mark. basically, get arcane ring (or whatever its called) so that your creeps have infinite mana and you can spam stomps to make money between ganks. then farm up a staff of the master for the 30s cd on your ultimate. then push for the win with unbeatable heals. if the game goes past 35-40m you are a crutch to your team. a team that knows this will push mid all the way once you have ring/staff.

[Reonhato]

ice ogre, wolf, minotaur.

my build is ring of the teacher, bracer, steam boots, astrolabe, puzzle box

if a game gets past the 25-30 minute mark you have to totally change the way you play. stop relying on creeps,pushing and ganking and start playing pure support. stay out of fights and just survive, use your q+w skill combo. keep your ice ogre out of it and just spam his skill as often as you can safely. same with wolf except no need to do anything since hes passive, keep them with you out of the main fight. just send the minotaur into the fight so you can stun if you have time. most important thing is just keep an eye on everyones health and heal when needed.

ophelia imo requires more burst apm then any other hero. most of the time you do nothing and just let creeps do the work. then all of a sudden you have to throw out 5 skills in 2 seconds from 2 creeps and yourself while using puzzle box, astrolabe and waiting to use your ult efficiently. very hard hero to play well with.

[RogerDodger]

Dont get wolves
Dont get sotm
Dont get codex
Get ice ogres
Get hex
Get puzzlebox
Get astrolabe

[_1zabest]

Ophelia's end game effectiveness is never bad, +28% damage taken debuff. Nuf said

[Quickfix]

The best way to do it would be getting some kind of disable, preferably Totem. The reason why she's not as good as other intelligence heroes towards the end of the game is that she doesn't disable effectively; she has a mediocre nuke and a slow that loses its luster as the game goes on. The added damage effect is also limited late when heroes have more damage mitigation (added HP, armor, regen, etc.). No disable so to speak.

Staff of the Master if you believe you can end the game within a reasonable amount of time (before the opposing carr(ies)y gets too farmed/leveled) or Totem if the game drags out.

[link1313]

I prefer these items:
Frost Plate
PuzzleBox
Hex

Hex is really just for their carry who is probably gonna go after you first. Its necessary imho. I do also prefer whispering helm on her (an extra creep / more armor is always nice)

[laserblade]

SoTM, omega neutral stacking, and wards.

[deweylewie]

:Puzzlebox: if you don't mind all the micro and selection
:HarkonsBlade: for some serious damage output if you want to carry/cant gank so well mid-late, just farm jungle for it
:StaffOfTheMaster: for ult heal
:NomesWisdom: for support
:Astrolabe:

[jay`t]

Dont get wolves
Dont get sotm
Dont get codex
Get ice ogres
Get hex
Get puzzlebox
Get astrolabe

man this guy knows whats up

stom is trash on ophelia, a red herring that keeps you away from actual good items

[XrBob]

Lots of great posts, thanks. One thing, though when you say get hex, do you mean sheepstick? Also, do you have any specific advice for helping you micro?

[Espeon]

Yes, hex is sheepstick, and no, I suck at ophelia.

[_1zabest]

F1 = select your hero

I then usually select hero + all creeps and put it as CTRL+1, all creeps as CTRL+2

that way you can control just your hero, just your creeps, or both whenever you want
Also ensure that a stun/root creep is first in your selection so you can select your creeps and press stun straight away, and ensure that Ophelia is first in your creep+hero selection bind.



You can go to the level of giving each individual creep a bind but that is silly IMO when you can just tab through them. I generally only do this when I pick up an ice ogre, i'll leave the ogre standing out the back of my team (or following ophelia) and leave him out of my creep bind. When you see people's shields run out you select the ogre and recast the shield on them.

[Blackroot]

Get puzzlebox



puzzlebox



Get box



puzzlebox

This.

[HIIAMBOB]

Farm a doombringer if you want to be an AWESOME carry,who dies to a single nuke.
Or...
1.Gank gank gank start-mid game.Granting you/your team nice money advantidge,while making opponents lose money.
2.PUSH PUSH PUSH and destroy enemy towers.Granting you and your team money advantidge.
3.Kongor.You can easily solo kongor.Granting you and your team money advantidge + Token.
By 20-30mins you should have most towers and your team should have nice and shiny items to finish the enemy team off(unless they are retards,but in that case your are f*'d anyway so it doesn't really matter).

And yes puzzlebox = Nice pushing power,mana steal & damage in teamfights and ganks,an additional nuke,invis reveal and last but not least - epic lolz when you see how many people kill the purple puzzlebox guy and die to the 600 true damage.

[Reonhato]

Dont get wolves
Dont get sotm
Dont get codex
Get ice ogres
Get hex
Get puzzlebox
Get astrolabe



you get 3 creeps, ice ogres armor is spammable, you only need 1. the passives from wolf and mino stack nicely for your carry. i agree on getting puzzle and astrolabe though, those 2 are core

[Novice]

you get 3 creeps, ice ogres armor is spammable, you only need 1. the passives from wolf and mino stack nicely for your carry. i agree on getting puzzle and astrolabe though, those 2 are core

Thats why you go whispering helm. 1+ creep for late game, early game massive ancient creep stacking. End game creep selection:
Oqre magi (armor buff)
Minotaur (escape stun + 15% AS)
Snotter boss (MS bonus)
Wolf (Dmg aura)
Puzzle wizzard & Warrior (manaburn / suicide for aoe dmg)

Now, the actual use of creeps: Keep them away from midst of combat. (Exception of puzzlebox creeps, which you should keep in front of you, manaburn and attempt to output as much as DPS for the warrior so they'll smack him down and take the aoe dmg)

Basicly, have the strongest creep (Mino) follow you, then wolf to follow mino, then ogre to follow wolf, then snotter to follow the ogre. This way, they won't run into where you run, and having them key-binded, you can select each creep for their spells relatively fast.

About sotm: Completely waste of good money, rather roll hex / cyclone / frostfield. Actually useful endgame items. also sotm is "overwritten" by astrolabe. Going for both is just absurd.

so, item selections:
steamboots / armorboots, 2x / 1x bracer, WH, astro, puzzle lvl 3, hex / cyclone / frostfield.
A stable, durable support.

[Reonhato]

whipsering helm is only good in stomps, is hilarious to have 7-8 creeps. against any decent players its pointless, they will just kill your creeps and you have just wasted 2k

[RobertLoggi1]

How is lowering the cooldown on a heal that does 400 damage to your whole team bad? It brings the CD down by 90 seconds. That helps your team immensely ensuring an early heal and a second heal after a team fight to keep your friends going. I love the item.

On topic, to stay effective, buy a kuldras and have auras (nomes/astro/grieves effect) to help your team and push towers. That is what ophelia does best. As mentioned, a game with ophelia shouldn't drag out, not saying ophelia isn't useful in team fights, but she loses her touch since she has no AOE damage compared to other int heroes.

[Jayrod]

Best ophelia player I know ganks at one with command, then again at 3 with the true damage nuke and the creep from your first gank.

He's 1800+ so not pro, but not bad... His advice that he gave me with her was to not bother commanding more than 2 creeps early on. Max 2nd skill first to keep your nuking effective during the time of the game that is the most useful. You can get a TON of kills with even just one creep and her nuke maxed out and it makes the micro alot more sane for a long time. I recommend alternating command and the nuke ability, but maxing the nuke first for sure. Then you just need to do some creative ganking.

Mid game you should be able to manage a puzzlebox.... sheepstick if you somehow win the lotto, but really good ophelias dont spend too much time farming gold so thats seldom an option in a short-length game.

I'm not a great ophelia but I think the build my friend goes is.. focus is on early-mid ganks with lategame army potential. He gets the gold he needs for items from the ganking usually, but obviously shes not too tough to farm on.

1. command
2. Nuke thingy
3. Nuke thingy
4. command.
5. Nuke thingy
6. Ulti
7. Nuke thingy.
8-10. First ability with the slow
11. Ulti
12. First ability.
13. command
14. command

You can go a whole different route like chu and just lane with no creeps until midgame. I think thats kind of a waste, but if you're good enough its doable.

I agree that SoTM is a big waste on her. I think astrolabe is a good option if you cant get hex, but puzzlebox should be priority... puzzlebox just does too much damage and offers too much utility to not get... and that goes for most int and agility support heros...and electrician!

[Kaesetorte]

About the where to bind creeps question.

I dont get why people change the standard keybinds to something like items = 1 - 6 ... how do you reach 6 in a combat without screwing up by looking on your keyboard...

the standard configuration is ctrl + q / w / e / a / s / d which is just about perfect because you dont have to move the fingers away from your keybinds to activate items since all those keys ( excluding D ) are common used ones.

So i ask : Why would you change the keybinds?

[nclnck]

man this guy knows whats up

stom is trash on ophelia, a red herring that keeps you away from actual good items


I agree that Puzzlebox and Astrolabe are great choices for Ophelia, but like sotm they require some farm. I always prefer to get staff after my greaves and then get an astrolabe. Ophelia is one of the few heroes that gets real utility out of the stat bonuses as well as the ult upgrade from staff. It also helps to able to heal your allies across the map every 30 seconds while you're making that bank solo with your creeps jungling, pushing or counterpushing.

[XrBob]

I'm curious about leveling the nuke skill, ophelia's judgement, first. I always thought the slow/increase damage was better for ganking because it slowed them, and you can't always rely on teammates to have a slow or stun. It's true though that the nuke isn't that great late game as it's static damage, I've only ever used it to save a teammate. Which skill do you guys like to level first?

Also, I've seen some say that command level 4 isn't worth getting, do you agree? The tooltip doesn't specifiy exactly how the last level helps, I just figure more mana/health regen is always nice.

[Liang`]

Dont get wolves
Dont get sotm
Dont get codex
Get ice ogres
Get hex
Get puzzlebox
Get astrolabe



I understand your reasoning for no sotm or codex, but why no wolves again? Most players either pay no attention or miss the wolves during a team fight, and the damage boost can really strengthen dps heroes such as Puppet Master.

I guess AoE's could probably catch the wolf in an off chance, but that is only if you are stupid enough to make it follow your carry hero (who will be targeted). Additionally, if we are talking about semi-bad ophelia's who can't really micro all 3 minotaurs during a team fight, having a wolf just standing around does much good too.

Liang`

[RogerDodger]

The AoE of the wolves is 500

500 is extremely small, so unless you're also taking no damage and not moving at all (the wolf has 320ms, much slower than a hero with even basic boots) they're gonna be dead and/or useless.

Wolves are good for farming (used mainly by MQ) but not much else, an extra AoE stun from another minotaur would help much more.

How is lowering the cooldown on a heal that does 400 damage to your whole team bad? It brings the CD down by 90 seconds. That helps your team immensely ensuring an early heal and a second heal after a team fight to keep your friends going. I love the item.

On topic, to stay effective, buy a kuldras and have auras (nomes/astro/grieves effect) to help your team and push towers. That is what ophelia does best. As mentioned, a game with ophelia shouldn't drag out, not saying ophelia isn't useful in team fights, but she loses her touch since she has no AOE damage compared to other int heroes.What real major fight lasts more than 30 seconds? None.

That's 4,000 pissed away on not much more than 400hp, which you could've got for half the price. If you want a spammable heal you could get an astrolabe and then you have 2 heals (And it's cheaper).

[Shikadi]

About the where to bind creeps question.

I dont get why people change the standard keybinds to something like items = 1 - 6 ... how do you reach 6 in a combat without screwing up by looking on your keyboard...

the standard configuration is ctrl + q / w / e / a / s / d which is just about perfect because you dont have to move the fingers away from your keybinds to activate items since all those keys ( excluding D ) are common used ones.

So i ask : Why would you change the keybinds?

Very rarely would you have 5 or 6 "activateable items" (usually about 3 maximum, maybe 4) so you won't need to reach 6 during combat. Secondly, in the heat of a battle and flurry of fingers it can be troublesome hitting two particular keys simultaneously; you might miss one, or the other, or not hit them at the same time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the Ctrl+ binds work perfectly well for some people, but so do numbers and both setups have their reasons/advantages.

[nclnck]

Wolves are good for farming (used mainly by MQ) but not much else, an extra AoE stun from another minotaur would help much more.
What real major fight lasts more than 30 seconds? None.

That's 4,000 pissed away on not much more than 400hp, which you could've got for half the price. If you want a spammable heal you could get an astrolabe and then you have 2 heals (And it's cheaper).

This is just wrong.

People reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaally need to stop acting as if the ulti upgrade is all you get from a staff.
+10 str
+10 int
+10 agi (which, due to Ophelia's comparatively high agility gain, is pretty useful. Nothing spectacular, but considering you don't really pay for the agi gain, it's nice).
+200 mana
+150 health.
and the reduced cooldown.

Let's face it, Ophelia is pretty squish. That stam and hp, and the agi for armor sure don't hurt. And even though her first three spells are static and pretty cheap manacost-wise, with a 200/300/400 mana ultimate, it's kind of easy to go OOM sometimes. This is aided by the mana and int.

And honestly, saying the reduced cooldown is useless is just loltastic. You're saying you've never watched a teammate on the other side of the map go down because your heal was on cooldown? You've never used your ulti in a tough team fight, and wished you could quickly use it again to heal your allies/creeps up for a quick tower push before the enemy team revives? You've never been one NEWERTH'S BLESSING away from surviving a gank yourself, but it was on cooldown? Staff's utility on Ophelia is unbelievable.

[TurpinoS]

Greaves
Nomes
Staff
Puzzle
Sheep

(in order, you can mix staff and puzzle)

Minotaur + Wolf + Ice ogre.

Thats what it should look like by late game

Youve got the 3 creeps with the best auras (and to the smart kid, yes they do die pretty easily, just learn to micro them a bit, put your wolf behind your ranged carry, shouldnt get hit by aoe and will help a loooot), do the same with minotaur, armor everyone with ogre.


That is 5 auras + the puzzlebox aura + everyone armored...pretty good for lategame if you ask me.
Dont forget to also use your slow, a % dmg increase always scale.

[_1zabest]

Greaves
Nomes
Staff
Puzzle
Sheep

(in order, you can mix staff and puzzle)

Minotaur + Wolf + Ice ogre.

Thats what it should look like by late game

Youve got the 3 creeps with the best auras (and to the smart kid, yes they do die pretty easily, just learn to micro them a bit, put your wolf behind your ranged carry, shouldnt get hit by aoe and will help a loooot), do the same with minotaur, armor everyone with ogre.


That is 5 auras + the puzzlebox aura + everyone armored...pretty good for lategame if you ask me.
Dont forget to also use your slow, a % dmg increase always scale.



thisthis this!