-Armor Team Strategy

[Drasha]

Preface

The goal of this thread is to promote discussion of -armor strategies, why they work or don't work, what comps work, what is lacking to put more depth into the strategy (more heroes with physical spells ect), hopefully to teach people and collect replays of people playing this strat.

This thread and the discussion that it produces is going to be used to make a guide to all the different and under the radar strategies in hon. I don't pretended to know any thing so feel free to shout out if I said some thing you feel is wrong just back it up with some logic.

Overview of a -Armor Team

A -armor strategy uses heroes who can lower the enemy teams armor while doing physical damage. Its main advantage is making physical attacks stronger, making physical damage spells stay strong from the beginning to the end of the game and forcing the other team to spend gold on +armor items just to get back to normal armor levels. A -armor team relies on hero synergy instead of picking a group of the strongest heroes.

Facts to Know

-armor does not scale as well past 0 so stacking an excessive amount of -armor does not have much benefit.

Articles on armor hondb article and mechanics reference thread do mention other things i should link to or mention

Heroes, Items, and Bans

Heroes: Andromeda Armadon Pandamonium Deadwood demented shaman Pestilence Soulstealer Predator Defiler

-armor Items: Shieldbreaker deamonic breastplate

+armor Items: plated greaves ring of the teach/abyssal skull/nomes wisdom astrolabe whispering helm others. Most of these items are a good counter to a -armor team if a single hero has one of the aura items taking them out first is a good idea.

Bans

• Plague Rider he has a massive + armor ability
• Accursed he can dispel -armor effects and is strong on his own
• jeraziah his ult makes your set up worthless
• keeper of the forest he has a massive +armor ability as well but since hes pretty bad you don't need to ban him most of the time

Heroes picks extended information

Andromdea: One of the few ranged -armor heroes. On top of her -armor ability she also increases all auto attack damage which works rather nicly with -armor and she has a good single target stun for early game. She is a good pick up when you feel like you need a stun and a bit more -armor to help out in team fights. Can pick up wards.

Armadon: His slow gives a good amount of single target minus armor and his quill spray makes good use of aoe -armor. Easily a top pick if you want to take advantage of all the -armor effects you built the team around.

Pandamonium: His flick reduces armor but the best thing is all of his abilities do physical damage so the -armor directly effects them. Good pick up for an offensive lane.

Deadwood: his root will reduce armor but the real reason to pick him is for his physical damage ult. If you can reduce some ones armor to 0 his ult will kill them or bring them to an inch of death even late game. He can play mid against some heroes or work in a side lane.

Demented shaman: his ult gives you good aoe -armor for the enemy and/or + armor for your team. demented also works well with one of your melee heroes for an offensive lane. can buy wards

Pestilence: his ult gives a lot of -armor to a single target on top of his aoe stun you have a great hero. Works really well in combination with deadwood

Soulstealer: he has a good amount of auto attack damage and a big -armor aura. Works wonders as a solo mid hero and gives you a bit of insurance with a good amount of aoe magic damage.

Predator: his ult reduces armor in a wide aoe and he increases your teams auto attack damage. Decent carry pick since he benefits greatly from -armor because of carnivorous.

Defiler: her ult does a good deal of physical damage so if you need a ranged hero shes not a bad pick

Don't discount other heroes who don't have -armor abilities some times you need to pick them to round your team out and there is only so much -armor your team needs 3-4 -armor heroes works quite well.

Note worthy lanes

Andromeda pandamonium: double stun lane a comet can give you good set up for a flick and the combination of flick and aurora's -armor will get any heroes starting armor bellow 0.

demented shaman pandamonium: Flicking some one into your creep wave fallowed by demented shamans heal is a great one two punch that can easily drop most heroes. This combo is a great counter to any lane that has a melee hero in it.

demented shaman pestilence: great offensive lane with an aoe stun and strong slow.

Teams

These are just 2 set ups I feel would work well feel free to mention your own or ask questions. If you play these teams please post a replay link in the thread.

Tri-melee
Short lane Andromeda Armadon
Mid deadwood
Long lane demented shaman pestilence

Pros

• Pestalinces swarm -> deadwoods willowmaker instantly kills heroes for most of the game
• demented shaman and pestilence are a strong offensive lane
• Andromeda and armadon can hold a short lane and score a kill if the enemy over extends them self
• later in the game you have good initiation with pestilence and deadwoods ult + andros ult can make the fight a 3v5 if you are lucky

Cons

• You don't want to use this set up if deadwood can't take their solo mid.
• You have a triple melee set up which is hard to pull of.
• armadon andromdea lane is not optimal
• -armor is more single target then aoe making quill spam less awesome

Tri-ranged
Short lane Glacius Armadon
Mid soulstealer
Long lane demented shaman pandamonium

Pros

• soulstealer can solo mid when deadwood can't
• demented shaman pandamonium lane is just as strong as pestilence pandamonium if not more so
• glacius armadon lane is quite good and the aura lets all of your lanes spam their spells
• good amount of aoe magic damage to mix in if they buy a lot of armor
• you have a much more even spread of -armor for quill spam

Cons

• can't take out single targets as well
• not much initiation
• has more low health heroes

more stuff to be added as people talk

[[LC]pk_thunder]

for the tri-ranged, why not pesti/dsham bot? pesti has initiating powers with his pk build and it would help ss a ton to set up for his ult?

[[TIAA]tarosh]

I remember a lineup with pesti/dsham long lane, soulstealer mid (going for shieldbreaker later on), andromeda and <cant remember lanepartner> shor lane, played by a hightier clan.

nasty thing.

[[NHRA]Meowshi]

One thing I'm seeing problems with is if mid loses.

For example, lets say you end up going with Deadwood vs. (Insert super hard mid that beats deadwood). There's absolutely nobody available to roam in either one of the lanes. Lets say they start triganking- You have nobody that is able to port without losing a lane (Unless you want like Demented Shaman to start getting his farm on.)

Tri-Melee: If Andromeda roams, Armadon loses lane dominance very easily and you will lose that lane. If Demsha leaves, Pestilence loses the lane. Lack of roamers would screw you against an Ophelia sitting at your ramp ganking mid.

Effectively the same with Tri-ranged.

When looking at this build, you're heavily relying on momentum to carry you through the game. Deadwood does well, farms a portal key, and then you have enough to insta-gib them the entire game.

What happens if Deadwood doesn't do well and gets shut down? Same with soulstealer in your other one?

In my opinion, you don't need more than Demented Shaman and Pestilence. These two combined are enough to bring target hero to negative and everyone else to low armor. I would suggest as an example: If you have demented shaman pestilence / soul stealer mid, have Andromeda roam and have someone capable of soloing a lane- doesn't matter if they have armor reduction or not. Defiler, as mentioned, would be a great pick. As you mentioned yourself, Demented Shaman + X hero is great against any lane with a melee in it. However, recent trend shows 4 ranged / 1 melee. Or worse.

Also, your team lacks tower killing skills. If the enemy has a fast creep nuker, you won't be able to really push the towers early game. I'd recommend a physical based pusher, such as engineer. Tinker would let you mow down towers very early. Turret + Him = lots of physical DPS. His ultimate would be very good utility in any team. (Proposed: You're looking at Demented Shaman / Pestilence / Engineer / Andromeda / Defiler)

Saccing bans on Keeper of the Grove doesn't seem worth it to me, especially if Pestilence is a sure pick. Plague Rider and Accursed is completely understandable. Jeraziah is very weak early game, but I can see it happening.

[JarJar]

Is there an instance where this lineup would not be ideal? ie, against casters/ carry heavy team/ turtle strategy?

[[MiMM]Moreepo]

Awesomeness

[[TL]bear_hugger]

My line up:

Andromeda
Demented Shaman
Soul Stealer
Pestilence
Corrupted Disciple ( His ultimate also deduct -armor )

Long Lane:

Pestilence + Demented Shaman: This lane is powerful with DS as babysitter and Pest will rush for PK for initiation.

Mid: Corrupted Disciple. Why not SS mid? CD needs the farm to carry the team. He has only 1 aoe spells for farming.

Short Lane: Soul Stealer. SS will play defensively. He needs the level, not the farm. He will be able to catch up with farming when he hits lvl 9 and so on.

Roamer: Andromeda. With 2 solo lanes, andromeda should be roaming to provide lane presence and provide support if one of the lane is out of control.


CD and SS will benefit greatly from Andro Aura. CD also benefit from DS arcane hide, make him fairly hard to be killed. SS and CD can provide AoE for team fight.

[[LC]pk_thunder]

Is there an instance where this lineup would not be ideal? ie, against casters/ carry heavy team/ turtle strategy?

probably pushing teams cus -armor is most effective in late game

[[EARS]wooooo]

Soulstealer in a dual lane would get rolled. He wouldn't get a single creep kill, and with his starting health/no escape ability means he would have to sit at tower and would probably get outleveled by the dual lane. Not even possible.

[[HCTc]Dragnmn]

You don't really need everyone to get -armour for this to work I think.

Andro is necessary, buffing base damage, reducing armour, ranged attack and being a strong ganker/roamer.
I guess Predator would be a nice carry, especially with a Demonic Breastplate for the aura.
Pest is also a nice pick, as initiator.
For the rest, something like Dsham/Glacius would be nice, while Glacius is primarily magic based, he does have that aura, and Dsham is a great support with -armour ult and Entangle which is physical.

The main problem I see here is that either Predator or Andro have to solo mid, which leaves a support playing 1v2 if Andro is roaming. For this I'd propose swapping either Dsham or Glacius out for someone like Soul Reaper.

The other heroes OP mentioned I feel are situational. Panda is great when you suspect a lot of Shrunken Heads (or they picked someone like Predator first), Defiler if you want to push more, Soulstealer is probably too squishy, but great if he gets the farm off. Predator can be swapped out for Armadon if Carnivorous won't have too much effect and you need the tank.

Another unmentioned pick could be Swiftblade for his ult, using his magic Blade Frenzy early game and his physical ult, Counterattack and especially built-in crit (imagine 130%-damage crits) lategame.

[Drasha]

for the tri-ranged, why not pesti/dsham bot? pesti has initiating powers with his pk build and it would help ss a ton to set up for his ult?

pesti/demented would work fine for bot lane.

One thing I'm seeing problems with is if mid loses.

For example, lets say you end up going with Deadwood vs. (Insert super hard mid that beats deadwood). There's absolutely nobody available to roam in either one of the lanes. Lets say they start triganking- You have nobody that is able to port without losing a lane (Unless you want like Demented Shaman to start getting his farm on.)

Tri-Melee: If Andromeda roams, Armadon loses lane dominance very easily and you will lose that lane. If Demsha leaves, Pestilence loses the lane. Lack of roamers would screw you against an Ophelia sitting at your ramp ganking mid.

Effectively the same with Tri-ranged.

melee heroes can port in to stop a gank just as well if not better then the ranged heroes. Picking up panda or pest and roaming a bit with them works against a hard mid but if the mid is to hard for deadwood don't pick him and grab some one else to mid (ss, defiler, cd.)

When looking at this build, you're heavily relying on momentum to carry you through the game. Deadwood does well, farms a portal key, and then you have enough to insta-gib them the entire game.

What happens if Deadwood doesn't do well and gets shut down? Same with soulstealer in your other one?

If your mid player is getting shut down completely the other team is probably better then you. The strategy is dependent on all of the heroes working well together so even if your mid can't hold his own if your side lanes did well you should still come out on top in team fights.

In my opinion, you don't need more than Demented Shaman and Pestilence. These two combined are enough to bring target hero to negative and everyone else to low armor. I would suggest as an example: If you have demented shaman pestilence / soul stealer mid, have Andromeda roam and have someone capable of soloing a lane- doesn't matter if they have armor reduction or not. Defiler, as mentioned, would be a great pick. As you mentioned yourself, Demented Shaman + X hero is great against any lane with a melee in it. However, recent trend shows 4 ranged / 1 melee. Or worse.

Its less about getting the -armor and more about having the physical damage to take advantage of the enemy having sub 0 armor. Current meta game using 4 or more ranged heroes might just be a trend that means right now is not the best time to play a -armor team.

Also, your team lacks tower killing skills. If the enemy has a fast creep nuker, you won't be able to really push the towers early game. I'd recommend a physical based pusher, such as engineer. Tinker would let you mow down towers very early. Turret + Him = lots of physical DPS. His ultimate would be very good utility in any team. (Proposed: You're looking at Demented Shaman / Pestilence / Engineer / Andromeda / Defiler)

If the other team didn't pick engineer I would pick a team around him and ignore a -armor team. As for not pushing early on why would you need to? Gank early/mid game and push mid game and force team fights where you have an advantage.

Saccing bans on Keeper of the Grove doesn't seem worth it to me, especially if Pestilence is a sure pick. Plague Rider and Accursed is completely understandable. Jeraziah is very weak early game, but I can see it happening.

Keeper is a forth ban(forth ban is in case they ban one of your first 3) just to make sure they don't counter pick you. I would save banning plague until last so if they ban him for you, you can ban keeper as well.

Is there an instance where this lineup would not be ideal? ie, against casters/ carry heavy team/ turtle strategy?

Its a general sort of team that should work against most other teams. There are probably set ups that it is really bad against but that is some thing I can't save for sure based of mostly theory. (need people to play these set ups and talking about them)

My line up:

Andromeda
Demented Shaman
Soul Stealer
Pestilence
Corrupted Disciple ( His ultimate also deduct -armor )

Long Lane:

Pestilence + Demented Shaman: This lane is powerful with DS as babysitter and Pest will rush for PK for initiation.

Mid: Corrupted Disciple. Why not SS mid? CD needs the farm to carry the team. He has only 1 aoe spells for farming.

Short Lane: Soul Stealer. SS will play defensively. He needs the level, not the farm. He will be able to catch up with farming when he hits lvl 9 and so on.

Roamer: Andromeda. With 2 solo lanes, andromeda should be roaming to provide lane presence and provide support if one of the lane is out of control.


CD and SS will benefit greatly from Andro Aura. CD also benefit from DS arcane hide, make him fairly hard to be killed. SS and CD can provide AoE for team fight.

This would work rather well.

probably pushing teams cus -armor is most effective in late game

-armor is more effective early and mid game then late game. Basically what you want -armor to do is reduce the target to 0 armor late game when heroes naturally have more armor and items this becomes harder to do. Early on when they only have maybe 3 armor even the weaker -armor abilities will reduces them to 0.

You don't really need everyone to get -armour for this to work I think.

You don't need every one to have -armor abilities I just pick up a lot of them since they have physical damage abilities which works well with the over all idea of a -armor team.

The other heroes OP mentioned I feel are situational. Panda is great when you suspect a lot of Shrunken Heads (or they picked someone like Predator first), Defiler if you want to push more, Soulstealer is probably too squishy, but great if he gets the farm off. Predator can be swapped out for Armadon if Carnivorous won't have too much effect and you need the tank.

Another unmentioned pick could be Swiftblade for his ult, using his magic Blade Frenzy early game and his physical ult, Counterattack and especially built-in crit (imagine 130%-damage crits) lategame.

pandas a great ganker don't see him as situational at all. Armadon is perfect for a -armor team its like that is what he was made for easily a better pick for this kind of set up then predator in my mind.

Swiftblade could work rather well in this set up I am just not in love with him compared to the other melee heroes to pick from.

[[LC]pk_thunder]

imho -armor works best lategame still cus they stack armor then and if u can get them to -10 to 10 armor then u're doing more dmg than if u didn't have that

[Apostate]

It is crucial that a -armor team either picks or bans demented shaman. It is impossible for this strategy to work effectively in fights against shaman.

[[SHZZ]Battlerager]

I tried this once when playing BD. Probably my favourite mode btw because seeing possible strategies there mostly beats the classic "strong hero" picks with no strategy.


Remember it working really well. Will have to try make my buddies go for this again soon, will report results.

[Stalker]

With the old BS -magic arm was far superior
HB life voids, BS hammers, mag jumps in, behe jumps in and swift mops up. really no counter for it as Idol is the only item and doesnt stack.
Make them waste it then laugh. doesnt work anymore though :<

[Hygao]

Nice

[[S2]ElementUser]

No ?

[[LC]pk_thunder]

With the old BS -magic arm was far superior
HB life voids, BS hammers, mag jumps in, behe jumps in and swift mops up. really no counter for it as Idol is the only item and doesnt stack.
Make them waste it then laugh. doesnt work anymore though :<

why does swift mop up?

no ?

[[HCTc]Dragnmn]

pandas a great ganker don't see him as situational at all. Armadon is perfect for a -armor team its like that is what he was made for easily a better pick for this kind of set up then predator in my mind.

I'm simply not a fan of Pandamonium. Also, I see Armadon and Predator as having two different roles. Armadon is carry and AoE-machine, being able to damage everyone for a lot of health, and if they try to kill you, you deal even more damage. Predator is carry/anti-carry, the more health you have the faster you'll go down and the more he heals. Two different picks, both viable. I feel Predator is the better pick here.

Swiftblade could work rather well in this set up I am just not in love with him compared to the other melee heroes to pick from.

There are probably better picks, but he can be a nice against disable or magic-heavy teams (as can Predator though).

I also forgot about Deadwood in my line-up, he can probably instagib. I guess I'd go with Andro (still think she's mandatory), Defiler (not sure), Deadwood mid, Dsham (either pick or ban him) and Predator. Maybe Pest or something for Defiler, but that's triple melee.

A slightly related question: I guess Andro's passive doesn't work on Defiler's ult?

[IAmLadyGaga]

I think a DS/Pest lane with SS mid is plenty enough -armour to make a strategy out of it, with initiation potential and powerful physical attacks to make the most of that armour drop. Hopefully both Pest and SS will go for blink, and should get their blinks reasonably early as they are in strong farming lanes (bottle/crow mid).

The other lane would ideally be a kill lane involving Torturer (because he can tear down towers in no time at all, giving the team strong pushing ability). Tort/Magmus or Tort/Voodoo work very well, Tort/Voodoo is less standard but very, very nasty for your average semicarry/babysit combination.

I just think the advantage of a powerful offensive short lane is worth losing more -armour heroes, when you're going to need fast pushing power anyway; Defiler/roaming Andro is a possibility but I'd rather just run over their long lane with double stun.