Abbadon’s Success in the Pub Scene

Currently, as per dotabuff.com, Abaddon has the second highest pub win rate this month (at 56.64%) . I believe this is the case because of the versatility of the hero and the power and synergy between his skills. Abaddon has the potential to be a hard support, an offlaner, played mid (albeit somewhat ineffectively), as a semi-carry or (and this is quite a stretch) as a hard carry. Although he functions best in some roles (the consensus amongst more experienced players is that he is best played as a support) the way that his skills come together mean than he play multiple roles effectively.

This means that even if the person playing him may not have the best idea of what composition he should be placed in and against or if the game develops in an unexpected direction he has the capability to adapt to those circumstances. His ultimate, shield, deathbolt and frost sword give him the ability to dive towers without a care in the world and slow his opponents down continually as he gradually whacks them to death. This gives him the opportunity to take a strong early game start and move into a powerful mid-game position where he focuses on attack speed (with items like Mask of Madness) and damage/utility (with a skull basher for example). Additionally, should the enemy team finally reach the end of their patience and choose to focus him down in a battle his ultimate gives him a 4 second delay from death every time and forces attention to be focused elsewhere lest he benefit from damage dealt during the duration. Alternatively, played as a support, Abaddon has the ability to heal and do damage as he chooses, provide a temporary respite from aggression and free teammates from dangerous situations (due to the shield removing negative effects), give bonus move and attack speed to surrounding allies should he end up striking the opponent and, on top of all that, enjoy a considerably longer life span than most supports due to his ultimate.

As a support, his ultimate provides the added effect of causing players to not bother going after him/her because his ultimate will just go off anyways and prevent aggression for a short period. This means that unlike the fate of a support in many a team fight (being blow up in a few seconds) Abaddon often has the opportunity to move throughout the battlefield relatively untouched until the remainder of his team has fallen. There are a few more factors to touch on (attack animations and cast animations being relatively succinct, less of a familiar hero to many players, and the automatic trigger aspect of his ultimate) but in the interest of keeping this somewhat condensed I’ll stop there for now. In summary, Abaddon is currently enjoying such a high win rate this month because of the flexibility the hero provides and the ease with which he can be adapted to the playstyle of the person controlling him as well as the tempo and developments in the game.

 

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