Hello, This is the guide to playing Doombringer as a semi-support jungler. I could start this guide by listing Doom's abilites and suchs but I won't do that. Instead I'll just provide you with a link to http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Doom_Bringer where you can find all the details considering the hero skills and whatnot. In the following Chapters' I will expect that you will know what each spell does and so on, so check out the wiki page!

This is what some of you might be thinking right now, as Doom is considered as a Carry in normal metagame and he is often bought items suchs as Hand of Midas and Radiance. According to Dotabuff Doombringer's winrate is 45% and that's atleast 5% too low for such a great hero, and in my opinion it comes down to the playstyle most people use.

So why is doom usually considered a carry? All I can think of is the Devour(and maybe scorched earth a bit. but even that is more tanking spell than carrying spell). So we got ourselves a hero with 1 carrying ability and all the rest of the abilities could fit support just fine, ms buff/heal, strong nuke and Doom(one the best disables in the game)! For me it seems that using Doom as a carry is like using Vengeful Spirit as carry, sure she has got +32% damage aura, stun and - armor but the thing is that it also buffs you friends. Same goes with doom, Most of his Neutral creep abilities are Auras, then he got a nuke, disable and Msbuff/heal. So if we mess around with the item build of this hero we will get out a great support hero that can rush early support items and be one hell of a menace for the enemy team!

Another thing noting is the time when a hero has most strenght compared to other heroes in the game. For a hard support like Crystal maiden this would be the first 5-10 minutes of the game after which most other heroes start to be stronger than her, for Phantom lancer this would be the total opposite being rather weak in the early stages and growing into this army of destruction. But what about Doombringer? Doombringer has the same quality as most hardcarries as he is almost totally useless in the early parts of the game(mana pool problems, no armor), but thanks to devour he is able to get more money in the early parts of the game than other heroes. This will cause him to have an advantage in the middle parts of the game(around 10-25 minutes),if you build the appropriate items to capitalize on this advantage that is. After the middle game though his strenght starts to go down in comparison as heroes such as Spectre, Phantom lancer, Phantom Assasin, Lifestealer just go pass him in strenght due to their powerfull scaling abilities, so even though Doombringer might be leading in farm in comparison to other carries the other carries are still more powerfull in the late parts of the game. And that is why I suggest you try playing him as a Semi-Support hero!

Here is a list on which skills you should level up at each level.

• lvl 1 Devour
  
• lvl 2 Scorched Earth
  
• lvl 3 Devour
  
• lvl 4 lvl ? Death
  
• lvl 5 Devour
  
• lvl 6 Doom
  
• lvl 7 Devour
  
• lvl 8 lvl ? Death
  
• lvl 9 lvl ? Death
  
• lvl 10 lvl ? Death
  
• lvl 11 Doom
  
• lvl 12 Scorched Earth
  
• lvl 13 Scorched Earth
  
• lvl 14 Scorched Earth
  
• lvl 15 Stats
  
• lvl 16 Doom
  
• lvl 17 Stats
  
• lvl 18 Stats
  
• lvl 19 Stats
  
• lvl 20 Stats
  
• lvl 21 Stats
  
• lvl 22 Stats
  
• lvl 23 Stats
  
• lvl 24 Stats
  
• lvl 25 Stats

The Devour is maxed first to make you a more effective jungler. Being able to eat up those big creeps and even getting extra gold and their abilities make doombringer as effective jungler as Nature's prophet or Enigma.

You will take 1 level of scorched earth at level 2 to help you jungle and possibly get some kills from mid lane or your easylane.

LvL ? Death is maxed out second, right after devour. Again, this will help you get kills on enemy heroes, as Doombringer sometimes has a hard time on catching the enemies. Also, hitting with the level multiplier really hurts, so try to target heroes that are on the level multiplier!

Doom is taken at 6,11,16 and you should gank someone everytime it is off cooldown. Doom makes most heroes totally useless as it silences them and ALSO makes them unable to use any items.It is often said that Doombringer is counter to everything and Doom is the reason for that.
Also, do not hesitate to cast Doom on enemy carries. Being unable to use items and spells causes a lot of problems to heroes such as Anti-mage, Lifestealer, Juggernaut etc.

Startup items:

• Tangos 90 gold
  
• Healing Salve 100 gold
  
• Stout Shield 250 gold
  
• Ring of Protection 175 gold
  
• Total: 615 gold

As you can see, the start up items cost a bit more than you are given at the start of the game. This is not a problem, as you can wait few seconds in the base after the money starts to tick in and still make it for the jungle before the neutrals spawn at 0:30.

Early game: 0-15 minutes in the game

• Ring of Basilius (500)-------> Vladmir's Offering (2050)
  
• Boots of Speed (450)
  
• Town Portal Scroll (135)
  
• Mekansm (2306)
  
• Total: 4941

When jungling you will upgrade your Ring of Protection into Ring of Basilius as soon as you have money and the courier is free for you to use (as mid and offlane heroes take priority). If you can't get to use the courier then just farm for Morbid Mask and Ring of Basilius and go get them from the base and then head back into the Jungle.

After finishing Vladmir's Offering, you'll get yourself Boots of Speed and a Town Portal Scroll. This is the time when you start to really be active on the map and not just AFK farming in the jungle. Keep an eye out for any dives from enemy team as you can easily kill them by teleporting to the tower and Dooming them to HELL! Also as you rushed really early Vladmir's Offering you will greatly increase your team's push potential and if you see your team pushing you should teleport there and help them with it.

As next item you will make will be Mekansm. Yes, you heard me! This might give you some strange looks in lower skill pools and might surprise your teammates anyways, so it's a good idea to inform them at the start of the game that you will be building Vladmir's Offering and Mekansm as multiples of those items in the team are not a good idea. Mekansm alongside with Vladmir's Offering will not only increase your survivability alot but also your whole team is now tankier than ever! (+5 armor aura from Vladmir's Offering and +2 armor and +250hp heal from Mekansm for all your allies.)


Mid Game: 15-30 minutes in the game.

• Arcane or Phase Boots (~1000)
  
• Aghanim's Scepter (4200) or Heaven's Halberd (3850)
  
• Town Portal Scroll (135)
  
• Sentry Ward (200) [Optional]
  
• Total: (5185-5535)

After the early parts of the game the item build becomes a bit more trickier as you need to choose between a few items depending on what heroes the enemies are having and how well you and your team are doing.

First choice is between Arcane or Phase Boots. Doombringer needs Phase Boots to be able to get to his enemies and hit them so they're your main choice, BUT if the enemy is using heroes that drain out mana (I mean heroes like Nyx, Invoker, Kotl but not antimage, as you don't want high mana pool if you're fighting against antimage) then you should go for Arcane boots, otherwise you won't be able to use your Mekansm when needed.

The Next choice is the thoughest one, it will be your first and possibly only expensive item in the whole match and choosing the wrong one for wrong situation might cost you the game so choose wisely.

My personal favourite is Aghanim's Scepter as it increases Doom's damage by WHOPPING 710 damage at max level! and increases the duration by 1 second. It is a good all around choice as it provides you with all stats aswell.

Heaven's Halberd is a lot more situational item and should only be taken if you're going against heavy physical hitters. It makes you more tanky providing you with health and evasion and also gives you the disarm ability.

Also note that if you're going against heroes like Bounty Hunter, Rikimaru or any other invisible hero you should buy sentry wards for the team, place them to the ground right before pushing a tower or when you feel like a teamfight is going to start soon. If the enemy get's careless and walks into your sentry's vision you can quickly doom him and he's a goner, after that the enemy can't defend their tower or are forced to fight 4 against 5.

Luxury Items: 30+ minutes in the game

• Buyback Money (~1500)
  
• Gem of Truesight (700) [Optional]
  
• Boots of Travel (2450)
  
• Assault Cuirass (5350)
  
• Shiva's Guard (4700)
• Heart of Tarrasque (5500)
  
• Scythe of Vyse (5675)
  
• Refresher Orb (5300)
  
• Necronomicon (5200)

If everything is going your way you want to end the game at around 30-40 minutes as your power is starting to go down rapidly in comparison to enemy carries. In this phase of the game, you will want to ALWAYS have Buyback money saved up. If you end up with more money then you should go for Boots of Travel, as it is really effective to be able to die, then buyback and teleport back into the fight when trying to finish the game.

If you've got a lot of kills or have got a lot of extra money for some other reason you can make one of the Luxury items. Also, in case the game keeps dragging on, Doom is a great hero even though the game lenght increases as he can still be somewhat powerfull in lateish game because of his great farming ability. But still you want to end quickly as Doom peaks faster then most other heroes.

Again, if you're going against invisible heroes you should buy Gem of Truesight.

In this Section I will tell you how to jungle with Doom effectively.

First of all, you're going to take devour as your first spell and then walk to the big camp (it's the camp that's closest to your base). Make sure you arrive there a bit after 0:30, because if you stand there at 0:30 then the camp will be blocked and no new creeps will spawn. You will then use devour on the biggest creep that spawned there, then proceed to kill the remaining creeps from the camp. UNLESS, this is important, do not try to kill the small ursa at lvl 1-6 as that creep is really powerful and will eat up most of your health while you kill it. This will slow down your farming speed greatly!

After the big camp is done, walk up to the small camp and proceed to kill the creeps. Then walk back to the big camp or another camp that is close if the big camp hasn't respawned yet. Devour should be ready again, so you'll use it on the big creep again. You will be repeating this. Remember to always eat the biggest creep with devour when at levels 1-6 as at this time the experience gain is more important than which ability you get.

There are a few things that can make your life a lot easier when jungling or harder if you're unlucky. For instance if you get unlucky and the big camp keeps spawning Ursas all the time, this will slow you down as the Ursa's Clap is next to useless when Jungling (as you can't use it due to your low manapool). On the other hand you might get lucky and the camp spawns Centaurs or Trolls which have nice auras and make your jungling faster. Try to adjust to whatever the situation.

Here is a video of me doing this in a bot lobby I was a bit slower than usual and only managed to get Vladimir's Offering, Boots of Speed and Town portal scroll at 9 minutes. But still after those 9 minutes I would've joined my team and pushed few towers down and would easily have mekansm before 15 minutes.

As I mentioned earlier, when Doombringer devour's a neutral creep he gains the abilities of that creep. During the early jungling phases this doesn't matter much as you have low control on what abilities you gain, as you're always eating the biggest creep. (If you do get lucky and get ensnare i suggest you to try gank and so forth but you can't always get so lucky.)

Later on though you will have much more freedom when it comes to the abilites, as levelling up isn't your main priority anymore. As long as you don't eat a creep with abilities you will keep your old abilities. So when you have the abilties you want you should either devour lane creeps or check if the neutral creep you're about to devour has any abilities. Here are some creeps that you should try to get.

Kobold Taskmaster: +12% movement speed aura. This ability is just amazing and will help you in various situations. I suggest you get this if possible when you leave then jungle at around 10-15 minutes.

Alpha Wolf: 20% chance for 2x Crit And +30% damage increase aura. This is a must have in the mid/endgame, especially if you have a traditional carry that relies on physical damage.

Centaur Khan: Area stun and +15 Attack speed aura. If you can't get Kobold or Alpha then Centaur is your next best thing.

Ghost: Ghost's have froststrike that slows enemies down by 20% (ms and as) and also grant +14 damage. If you get really unlucky go with the ghost, but you better try to get one of the above as soon as possible.

This build has really specific uses and will fail if used in a lineup that does not synergize with this. As you might have guessed this build works best with teamfight/push lineups that aim to end the game early rather than farm for 50 minutes.

Heroes you love:

• Luna (when played as LGD.int style 5-man push)
  
• Leshrac (good pusher)
  
• Death prophet (good pusher)
  
• Tidehunter (awesome teamfighter)
  
• Brewmaster (awesome teamfighter)
  
• Nightstalker (Dive, take tower, repeat.)
  
• And so on, I bet you got the picture.

Also there are some heroes that prevent you from winning the game early and if your opponent picks heavy amount of antipush I would reconsider using this build on doombringer.

Heroes you hate:

• Keeper of the Light
  
• Puck
  
• Windrunner
  
• Rubick
  
• Tinker
  
• etc...

Usually 1 antipusher is not enough to prevent you from pushing with your team but if your opponent team has 2 or more antipushers that's big trouble.

The next part is for those who might play captains mode on publics or scrimm. If you mostly play all-pick in public games then you don't have to think about this much but it's still something to think about.

Why take him instead of Enigma/Chen/enchantress/furion?

This is a though question to answer, because he is way more awesome than those hippies? just kidding. But it is indeed rare to actually have a scenario when Doombringer is better than those heroes. Few good reasons to use Doombringer instead: Doom, when your opponent is using heroes such as Storm spirit, Clinx, Enchantress, Anti-mage, Queen of Pain, that are totally shut down if they get silenced for 15 seconds then Doombringer is your man! also if you need pushing power but can't afford to have more squishy heroes in your party due to enemy having heroes like Rikimaru, Nyx, Clinx or Bounty hunter.

Yes thank you for reading this guide and If you liked it go give this doombringer a try in a game. I appreciate any feedback you might have so fire away!

And Don't forget to Rate the guide if you think it was helpfull.

Cheers, VitunSuoPaska.

5.1.2013 version 1.00

9.1.2013 version1.01, Added item pictures.

9.1.2013 version 1.02, Added new section "Doombringer, Semi-Support? WTF?!"

11.1.2013 version 1.03, Added Jungling video.

11.1.2013 version 1.04, Added new section "When to use"