Scrub plays Support Visage | What I learned playing 100+ Visage games (DOTA 2)

I played 100+ games of Visage in Dota 2, why? Because I find him kind of OP in the lower-mid (Archon) ranks. According to Dotabuff, Visage is seldom played in Crusader, Archon, and Legend brackets with only a ~1.5% pick rate but has a good win rate average on those brackets with 51.5% win rate. One of the reasons is rarely played on lower and mid-tier brackets is due to its greatest strength, its micro-control of Visage’s familiars. The game itself rates Visage as a high-complexity (3 stars) hero because of the need to control 3 units at once.

This article will not teach you how to play Visage, I will only discuss what I like about Its hero design and playstyle. I only played Visage on the support role though looking at my item build makes it look like I am playing an Offlane Visage. Technically, I am playing a very greedy support when playing Visage.

What I liked about Visage

Soul Assumption takes over the early game

The best thing about playing support Visage is you trample on the enemy core. Soul Assumption literally would take away 1/3 of your enemy’s health even with 2 charges. Even at level 1, Soul Assumption during the laning stage is devastating to both Safelane or a Hard support. It can deal between 180 to 230 Magic damage depending on the current magic resist of your enemy. They punch you, you punch harder.

Playing Visage as a support, I would take the first point of Soul Assumption earlier. The only problem with this is that you depend on your Offlane buddy to take the hits for you to gather charges.

Visage is a tank

Early and middle phases of the game is where a support Visage shines the best. Team fights during these phases is a buffet for Visage. I just stand around the fight spitting Soul Assumptions and shredding the enemy team. If they try to get me, they will have a hard time taking me down because of the Gravekeepeer’s Cloak. Level 1 Cloak with 4 layers up is 32% damage reduction and at level 4 a full Cloak is a whopping 80% damage reduction.

Visage is a tank in more ways than one. It launches highly destructive projectiles while having layers of protective armor.

Visage’s Familiars are a swiss army knife

Imagine you are safely farming on your jungle. Then suddenly two gargoyles appear from the fog of war drops on your head and a giant gargoyle starts stealing your movement and attack speed. Before you know it, 4 enemy heroes surround you.

One of the greatest strengths of Visage is the ability to scout enemy jungle safely with its trusty familiars. These familiars have flying movement so they move above walls and trees. another thing making these familiars strong is that they benefit from Gravekeeper’s Cloak as long as the layers on Visage aren’t depleted.

These familiars are great when pressuring the lanes and split pushing. They can really push back creep wave with just the gargoyles.

During team fights, familiars are usually ignored which is great. you can wreak havoc with AOE stuns. It gives vision and can easily chase any one trying to juke using the trees.

Visages left side talent tree is strong

This is one of the heroes that I think has a pretty great talent, each talent is strong enough and can picked if the situation needs it but the left side is just so strong as a support

Level 10 talents are straightforward. +6 damage on familiar might seem low but after getting it the familiar just shreds the enemy tower.

Level 15, making Soul Assumption hit 3 enemies is so strong, picking +2 seconds on Grave Chill over it is insane, Even at the later stage of the game, even though Soul Assumption is not as effective as the early game, it can still hurt especially at full soul charge. Making it hit multiple heroes just makes Soul Assumption not drop in usefulness

What I don’t like about Visage

AOE damage is Visage’s bane of existence

Want to counter Visage? Just pick any hero that has AOE, Leshrac, Underlord, Pugna, or Sven. AOE damage would break Visage’s Cloak easily while also killing his familiars.

You can play Visage as a support but playing it hard support is hard

Want to grief your safelane? Pick hard support Visage, you don’t have stuns until you’re level 6. You’re passive only benefits you. It’s hard to get Soul charges because if you are getting charges either you are getting pummeled or you weak safelane buddy is dying.

Long game isn’t good for Visage

If you reached the 45 minute mark on the game, it will be hard. At that time, your enemies are at their 5th or nearing their 6th item. Supports and Offlane already built magic resist items. The Cores have enough damage to one shot your familiars.

These are the moments I regret picking Visage. Most of the time I just try to send my familiars to other lanes to delay their movement and make the enemy respond to my familiars. Most of my comebacks with Visage are when I have delayed the game enough that my team has gathered enough gold to fight back.

I think Visage has this weird powerspike. His highest is during the first 15 mins, it quickly drops around 35 to 45 mins, and slowly gets stronger again around late game after it gets its 4th or 5th item(in my case it is usually the Boots of Bearing or Pipe of Insight) and its level 20 talent that gives armor corruption to Visage and its familiars attack.

What Items I usually buy

During laning phase, I would usually rush Ring of Basilus because Soul Assumption is a mana hungry spell, I can only cast 3 with Visage’s starting mana. After that I usually get boots, Visage is slow, playing this hero is almost torture with out boots, these problem gets worse because I usually level up Grave Chill at level 4 or level 5. You can try to get your magic wand after getting boots but if the lane has a spell spammer, I usually delay my boots to have better survivability using the magic stick/wand.

Post 10 minutes, I expect to have already built my Vlads. I always rush this and I see this as a core item for Visage. It buffs my allies during team fights and also makes my familiars tougher to kill. After the Vlads, I would get Drums of Endurance. This will help me take towers more easily and also help my allies during team fights. You will want to upgrade the Drums to Boots of Bearing as fast as possible. It solves one of Visage’s weaknesses, it is slow. Boots of Bearing will make the familiars hit faster and taking objective is a breeze.

My Playstyle

I play Visage as a greedy position 4, I usually act as a second Offlane hero. My main role is to buy aura and buffs. I play like this because I noticed that Archon and Legend Offlane players build damage and buy blink dagger. This means they are setting themselves as the initiation. This is quite common, so try to build auras to patch the weakness on our team but aura items are expensive. I am forced to be greedy as much as possible to get my core items.

The drafts that I feel Visage gels with are a brawling lineup and drafts that snowball early benefit Visage and my item build.

Is Visage easy to play

It’s a hero who controls other units, it won’t be easy but compared to other microing heroes, Visage is by far the easiest to play. The Familiar stuns even has it dedicated skill button on the main hero to make Visage easier for beginners to play. Another thing to practice when playing Visage is positioning because of Visage’s low movement speed you can easily get caught out of position. This can be fixed by getting Force staff or the Boots of Bearing. Aghanim’s Scepter and Shard will also help you survive getting caught out of position. The Shard will give Visage the ability to use Stone form and recover 25% of its health while the Scepter would give Visage a new ability called Silent as the Grave which turns Visage and its familiar invisible, bonus movement speed, and flying movement.

In the End

I have 60~% winrate with Visage on Archon and Legend Bracket and I think I would play it more after that. (hopefully Visage doesn’t get nerfed after the Crownfall update)