Dota 2 Guide | Best Items for Carries
Sometimes all it takes is good itemization
Game Guide by Arne on Nov 26, 2024
It is no secret that Dota 2 is an incredibly complex game where each match can be wildly different from one another and last for hours on end. One of the most important roles in the game is that of the carry. The Carry is responsible for making sure they hit the hardest and make the game-winning plays. However, they start off weaker than everyone else, mainly requiring items to get to their godly status. In this guide, we will take a look at the best items for carries, regardless of the play style.
Satanic
See, being a Carry doesn't just mean you deal a lot of damage. You also have to actually survive. To that end, Satanic is a wonderful item to have. It gives you +25 Strength, +25 Damage, and +30% Lifesteal. To top it off, you can also activate it to get +175% Lifesteal for 6 seconds. This item is incredibly good at the hands of pretty much every Carry Hero, be they ranged or melee.
The Strength boost is neat enough. It makes you more tanky and thus more likely to survive enemy ganks, staying present for longer in the fights.
Meanwhile, the active ability basically lets you heal from extremely low health to full HP. It is also a natural build-up as Morbid mask and Claymore are the two main and cheap components that are required to make a Satanic.
However, this is usually a very late-game item and is a long way away. You also need to have a couple of other essential items to make sure you're actually dealing enough damage to make that 30% and 175% count.
Eye of Skadi
Of course, everything has its own foil. Since Satanic is a pretty common item to get in the late-game, there's one counter-pick item that basically shuts it down. The Eye of Skadi gives you a +25 boost to your attributes, +250 HP, and +250 Mana. This is already a big boon.
This chalks up to over 750 in terms of HP, as well as some minor additions to Atk. Speed, Mana, HP Regen, Magic Resistance and Armour. Overall, you become more tanky and effectively gain a few levels worth of stats.
To top it off, your attacks now come with a passive. It lowers enemy movement speed by 20% if they're a melee hero and 50% if they're a ranged hero. They also get reduced attack speed and, more importantly, their healing and lifesteal, which are reduced by 40%.
You can already tell how helpful that is in mitigating a Satanic. It is also useful to help cut down enemy tanks or chase down enemy ranged carries.
Manta Style
The Manta Style is one of Dota 2's most beloved and strongest items. An incredible core item that gives +10 Strength, +26 Agility, and +10 Intelligence, basically boosting your stats by a couple of levels regardless of what stat-based hero you are. It also gives you a small boost to movement speed.
This has many unforeseen bonuses. Higher movement speed means you farm faster, get to the fight faster, and run away from losing fights faster. Being fast is incredibly useful for a Carry and the Manta Style is a useful way to get that necessary Movement Speed.
Aside from that, you can activate to become invulnerable for 0.1 seconds, in between which you are immune to pretty much everything, and it disjoints nearly everything in the game. Lina's using Laguna Blade? Time it right, and you can evade it with Manta Style.
That's not even its main function, either. You can use the Manta Style to summon two illusions around you that deal less damage and receive more damage but are unable to use spells. Since most carries rely on their right clicks, Manta Style is great for getting in a bit more damage.
As for utility, you can use it to get rid of annoying effects like Silence or many Slows. You can also distract and confuse enemies by controlling one of the illusions and drawing them away from your Real Hero with it.
Nullifier
The Nullifier has to be one of the most underrated items. Its active ability is not obvious to most people and requires a good deal of timing to get used to. However, in the right hands, it is one of the best items in Dota 2.
For its stats, it gives you +75 Damage, +10 Armour, and +6 HP Regen. None of these are anything to scoff at. The extra armor and damage are incredibly useful but never the main draw, only the bonus.
See, its active ability dispels an enemy target and continuously does so for 4 seconds. It also slows them down by 10%. Enemies with Ghost Sceptres, Glimmer Capes, and Eul's? No matter, all of them are useless since they get immediately dispelled. This makes life so much easier when chasing enemy supports or man-fighting enemy carries.
Black King Bar
Speaking of man-fighting, one time really stands above the rest as 'best regardless of any situation,' and that is the Black King Bar. A legendary item that gives you 60% resistance to magic damage. Makes you immune to reflected and pure damage and makes it so that spells don't have a negative effect on you.
All of this, put together, makes you nigh invincible. Most stuns, disables, slows, and other spell effects will do nothing to you, and magic damage will mean very little, effectively allowing you to shrug off enemy nukers.
Black King Bar, or BKB as it is usually called, has a diminishing effect time and a pretty long cooldown. So you have to time things well.
Blink Dagger
Now, this item here is probably the best movement item in the game. It's good for pretty much everyone, regardless of role. Even for the heroes with built-in blinks like QoP or Anti-Mage, there are some uses for a Blink Dagger.
See, the Blink Dagger lets you basically teleport up to 1200 units away. This has a cooldown of 15 seconds and can't be used within 3 seconds of taking damage.
This is an incredible initiation item, letting you move around the map and use natural barriers like cliffs and trees to your advantage. You can use it in an early game to farm faster or secure, and escape ganks. Late-Game, it transitions to being your initiation item. The thing you use to get into the heart of your enemy.
Later on, you may upgrade it to one of the three attribute-based Blink Daggers as well, giving it more use and opportunity for effects that supplement its already useful properties.
That's all for now. Dota 2 has a lot of items, and really, almost every item has a situation where it's useful. Don't be afraid to experiment! Naturally, there are a lot more items that can be useful, but these are basically the universal best ones in almost every situation. Some of these items are even useful for other roles. And at other times, they are not worth it if the enemy has a counter to it. So the key here is adaption and strategy with no small effort from timing.
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