DotA Heroes Counters (J - Z)

This is the continuation of DotA Heroes Counters (A - H)




In hero picking, I often pick heroes that would counter the opponent's heroes. I don't pick heroes just because they are strong. Having a line up that counters the opponent's main bread and butter won 90% of the time than just picking 'imbalanced heroes'.These are lists of some Counters for almost all Dota heroes. I wont say that these counters are the best. These are only suggestions on how you can counter heroes that you find hard to defeat. I'll be focusing on the heroes' skill disadvantage. Items, like BKB, linken, manta, etc, wont be considered. I will consider only some items that the heroes are really dependent upon like blink dagger for Earthshaker. But, the rest are heroes without defending items. These heroes are arranged alphabetically.

Jah'rakal, Troll Warlord

Some Hero Counters for Jah'rakal:
1. Bane, Lion, Rasta, and other Disable heroes - Troll will eat you up if you don't have good disable.
2. Viper - If he uses rampage, viper strike can slow his attack and move speed.
3. Omniknight - Kill him while in guardian angel.
4. Harbringer - With Jah'rakal's low int, a high int Harbringer can finish him in once click.

Jakiro, Twin Headed Dragon

Some Hero Counters for Jakiro:

1. Pugna - Jakiro depends much on spamming to be of worth, thus Netherward can hurt him a lot.
2. Defiance/Pipe Heroes - Jakiro's Ultimate is a damage per second type of skill. Building defiance will reduce every damage that it's close to nothing.
3. BKB - Turn on your BKB then, he'd rely on giving normal attack to give damage.
4. Naix - with naix's rage and lifesteal, Jakiro can't hurt him. Thus naix is needed for Jakiro's moderate amount of HP, better than other int heroes.

Kardel Sharpeye, Dwarven Sniper

1. Barathrum - With kardel's low hp, a charging barathrum constantly bashing him and additional disable - Netherstrike, Kardel may die without even having the chance to use some of his bullets.
2. Phantom Lancer - With Azwraith's number of illusions, Kardel will take time to detect the real Phantom Lancer that he may be finished before he say GOTCHA! Azwraith's also a good counter for Kardel's long range. Backstabbing kardel is one of the best thing to do against him because if your going to walk towards him, he would use his range advantage along with his bashing gun shots to deal a lot of damage before you reach him.
3. Vengeful Spirit - Swap him to remove his range advantage
4. Blink Heroes - It is possible to dodge his ultimate by simply blinking with perfect timing.
5. BKB - can dodge his ultimate too, which I find incorrect, philosophically. Bullets should be treated as physical damage no matter what, but that's out of the topic.

Kel'Thuzard, Lich

1. Slardar - Amplify damage to lower lich's armor because of frost armor. Sprint to get out of chain frost which takes a long time to reach you. Sprint out from your allies for you to save them from bouncing frost.
2. Lycan - another fast moving hero that wont be much affected from nova and chain frost.
3. Harbringer - You can dodge chain frost by casting astral imprisonment on your self. Also, harbringer's arcane orb are magical attacks that goes through high armor.
4. Lina/Lion/Zeus - Take advantage of lich's low hp by spamming powerful nukes.

King Leoric, Skeleton King

1. Lion/Anub'arak/Magina - These are heroes that can counter your ultimate by draining your mana.
2. Diffusal Heroes - Heroes that will build diffusal can counter leoric by not letting him resurrect wasting his ultimate.
3. PL/Naga Siren/Manta Style heroes - Since leoric is a single target hero, you can use manta style to lessen his damage output potential.

Knight Davion, Dragon Knight

1. Harbringer - take advantage of Davion's low int. DK laning against Harbringer will be difficult for him to farm because of spamming Astral Imprisonment. Easy denying for harbringer and mana reduction for Davion makes him farm less.
2. Ursa - DK has high armor but still lower than roshan. If roshan is Ursa's favorite food DK would just be his appetizer.
3. Slardar - to reduce Davion's armor.
4. Naix - Naix can beat davion in a 1 on 1 situation because of Naix's lifesteal and quicker attack speed.
5. Traxex - Traxex has high damage output and can kill Davion easily in team fights not to mention Traxex's slowing ability to reduce potencials from Davion.

Krobelus, Death Prophet

1. Pandaren Brewmaster - If Krobelus casts his Exorcism, use primal split and let your high hp pandas take the damage for the team and laugh after the exorcism is over.
2. Lion/Lina - Burst damage is needed in dealing with Krobelus. You need to finish him in a matter of seconds. Getting rid of Krobelus means good bye Exorcism.
3. Omniknight - Guardian Angel giving you 999999 armor can make you snob the Exorcism.
4. Tanker heroes - are essential to tank the Exorcism for the team.

Lanaya, Templar Assassin

1. Tiny - 1 avalanche removes refract. Without refract, lanaya is so fragile and easy to kill.
2. Venomancer - nova + venomous gale + normal attack with poison removes refract in
about 2 seconds.
3. Alchemist - he's too fat to be killed by lanaya and acid spray can remove lanaya's refract.

Lesale Deathbringer, Venomancer

1. Chen - Heal the whole team after getting damaged from Venomancer's poison nova.
2. Naix - Rage removes the poison or use simply use lifesteal.
3. Doom - doom veno to disrupt him from casting his poison nova and wipe out the entire team before he have the chance to do so. Casting poison Nova late is useless.
4. BKB heroes - make venomancer useless
5. Ghost Scepter heroes - cast ghost scepter after you've been infected by poison nova to get rid of it.

Leshrac The Malicious, Tormented Soul

1. Pugna - Netherward will kill spammers like Tormented Soul.
2. BKB heroes - Only diabolic edict will damage you from all of his skills
3. Nortrom - wont make him spam his skills simultaneously because of last word
4. Doom - Won't make him cast any spell making him useless

Leviathan - Tidehunter

1. Necrolyte - is needed to kill Leviathan faster because of reaper.
2. Puck - Simply cast phase shift to dodge his long cool down ultimate, ravage.
3. Earthshaker - You can disrupt his team mates by fissure after Levi cast his ravage. Ravage without his team to do the damage makes ravage so useless.
4. BKB heroes - Ravage wont affect bkb heroes. Use BKB then whack him up.

Lina Inverse, Slayer

1. Pugna - mainly because she is a nuker which makes her mana dependent. Netherward loves mana dependent heroes.
2. Anub'arak - mana burn will hinder lina from doing her combo. Thus, backstab, impale mana burn can eat lina's low HP.
3. Nortrom - silence lina before she can even cast her stun. Last word to disrupt her combo.
4. BKB heroes - lina can't hurt them.

Lion, Demon Witch

1. Pugna - same with lina, Lion will suffer from Netherward big time.
2. Bat rider - firefly against lion's impale
3. Nortrom - silence lion to make him ineffective
4. BKB heroes - for lion's perfect disabling skills

Luna Moonfang, Moon Rider

1. Pandaren Brewmaster - Simply split when she casts her Eclipse.
2. Illusion heroes(Naga Siren, Phantom Lancer) - wastes some of her eclipse's beams.
3. Puck - can dodge all of her Eclipe's beams.
4. Morp - can replicate allied hero and bait luna to cast her ulti.

Lucifer, Doom Bringer

1. Chen - Test of faith the doomed allied hero or heal from afar.
2. Leviathan - Dooming leviathan is such a bad idea for Kraken Shell will cancel the doom. The Doom's damage wont be maximized with levi plus leviathan has very high hp.
3. Centaur - doom will be wasted because of his high HP.
4. Warlock - Word to heal the doomed ally to lessen the doom's damage.

Magina, Anti-Mage

1. All Perfect disabling heroes - refrain magina from blinking out to escape.
2. Ursa Warrior - Trying to kill ursa with magina is a suicide.
3. Omniknight - Repel doesn't grant mana burn for magina
4. Illusion Heroes - magina will have a hard time detecting the real one.

Magnus, Magnataur

1. Necrolyte - for his high HP
2. Anub'seran - time lapse after he uses his ulti
3. Simply don't pile up so he wont have a perfect ulti.

Mangix, Pandaren

1. Anub'arak - Pandaren has low mana. Mana burn can prevent him from casting primal split.
2. Disabling heroes to kill him before he can cast primal split.
3. Storm Spirit - Simply run roll away from him after you see him transforming into 3 mighty pandas.
4. Life Steal Heroes - Attack him though he's in primal split. The damage dealt with you will just return because of life steal. Thus, you get a chance to kill all the 3 pandas.

Medusa, Gorgon

1. Lion/Anub - for mana draining purposes. Medusa is easily killed without mana shield.
2. Diffusal Heroes - to drain her mana off making her more vulnerable.
3. Tinker - I use tinker sometimes to counter Medusa at lane. Spamming Laser though her mana shield is on will drain all of her mana.

Mogul Khan, Axe

1. Necrolyte - Reapering his high hp when it reaches half makes it easier to kill him.
2. Leshrac - So you wont trigger his Counter Helix, you can just spam your skills to kill him. Thus, with his +20 armor from berserker's call, spamming is a good option.
3. Slardar - Amplify Damage to reduce his high armor.
4. Tanker heroes - so you wont reach his Culling blades' minimum quota.

Morphling, Morphling

1. Lion/rasta - good disables are needed because Morphling has a lot of escaping mechanisms.
2. Necrolyte - Morphling can use his strength morph for survival making his hp reach 4K. Reaper and finish him before he does so.
3. Kunkka - No matter how many escape mechanisms morph have, he'll be back to be whacked. X-mark on morph then full force, make him use his wave or replicate then return him for finishing blows.

Mortred, Phantom Assassin

1. Wind runner - windrunner can ignore Mortred's critical strikes because of her windrun skill, where as she have the only advantage to make damages to mortred.
2. Atropos - can enfeeble mortred to make his critical damages funny.
3. Troll Warlord - Blind mortred and whack im off.
4. Lion - good disable and perfect high damage nuke will make mortred cry.

Naix, The Lifestealer

1. Enigma/Atropos/Beastmaster - Heroes that can disable heroes that are immune to magic are needed to stop Naix.
2. Windrunner - Naix can't steal hp from windrunner on windrun.
3. Phantom Lancer - Naix will be confused as to where to attack because of mass illusions thus naix can't steal hp from illusions.

Nessaj, Chaos Knight

1. Axe - will love it to be hit with 3 illusions to trigger his counter helix dealing more damage to Nessaj. Thus, illusions will be destroyed easily by axe making nessaj's ultimate useless. Useless for nessaj but useful for axe.
2. Tiny - Tiny has AOE nuke that can wipe out Nessaj's illusions in no time. Tiny's craggy exterior also hurts Nessaj for being melee.
3. Earthshaker - it's obvious that illusions will make ES stronger.
4. Necrolyte - reaper for his strength and death pulse for his illusions.

Nevermore, Shadow Fiend

1. Clockwerk - Clockwerk's battery wont make Nevermore use his Requiem. Thus clockwerk can take advantage on his low HP.
2. Raijin - has the ability to make it even harder to be razed by sf and easier to dodge Requiem of souls.
3. Slardar - Stun and bashes wont make SF cast his requiem. Amplify damage makes lothars useless for SF.
4. Vengeful Spirit - Once SF gets his BKB and Dagger, Vengeful can simply swap SF away if he cast Dagger-BKB-Requiem. SF will have to walk to cast requiem after the swap. Walking means lesser potencial damage for requiem. BKB is wasted too.
5. Tinker - is used to lane with SF because of tinker's high damage output and SF's low HP.
6. Lanaya - SF have to hit lanaya 6 times before he can use requiem to be able to damage Lanaya. Doing so, gives lanaya opportunity to kill SF.

Nortrom, Silencer

1. Kardel - Doesn't mind if he gets silenced. He just want to shoot.
2. BKB heroes - use bkb after silence is casted then you wont be silenced anymore.


Pudge, Butcher

1. Doom - While pudge is on rot, doom him so he wont able to stop it for 12 seconds. Doom cannot be killed by pudge because of his high HP. If you want to run away from pudge, you have scourged earth to give you additional move speed.
2. Necrolyte - Pudge cannot be so careless in using his rot because if his HP reached half, one reaper can finish him off.
3. Centaur - Pudge can't use rot on heroes with much higher HP than him. He'd die faster.

4. High HP heroes
5. Heroes with escape mechanisms

Pugna, Oblivion

1. Doom - the best way to counter this hero is to doom it to make it useless in team fights.
2. Heroes with high HP - to survive his combo
3. Heroes that can clear creeps - to stop Pugna's sick pushing ability.
4. BKB heroes - to ignore pugna's skills

Purist Thunderwrath, Omniknight

1. Lion/Anub'arak - to drain his mana
2. Diffusal Heroes - to remove buffs made by omniknight and to burn his mana as well.
3. Naga Siren - Once he casts his guardian angel, you can sleep them first so once they wake up, Guardian Angel is wasted.

Raigor Stonehoof, Earthshaker

1. Raijin - can jump wherever Raigor is hiding to disrupt him from joining the clash.
2. Zeus - can delay his dagger-echo combo by using wrath of god
3. Venomancer - another delaying strategy for dagger echo combo is to search for Earthshaker and poison him. There is a long duration of poison making him unable to blink-echo.
4. Pipe heroes - makes echo slam do less damage
5. Silencer - Earthshaker can dagger echo but it's over after casting echo slam. He'd be silenced to death because of last word.

Razor, Lightning Revenant

1. Shadow Fiend - SF wont get purged because all his skills are non-hero click.
2. Heroes with summons or illusions - for Razor's ultimate not reach it's maximum damage potential.
3. Venomancer - lets you slow razor down without getting purged. Slowing razor wont make him chase the opponent making him waste his ultimate.

Rexxar, Beastmaster

1. Puck - Roar can be dodge by phase shift
2. Linken heroes - make him waste his ultimate.
3. Leviathan - roar duration wont be maximized
4. Chen - Chen can cast holy persuasion to get Beastmaster's pig.
5. Linken Heroes - to dodge his ultimate.

Rigwarl, Bristleback

1. Ursa Warrior - can eat bristleback in seconds
2. Sandking - Epicenter is ground damage which bristleback doesn't have any damage reduction.
3. Ezalor - Bristleback needs to chase heroes to get kills. So, you only need mana leak to rip all of the mana from bristleback, he won't have any mana for slowing and spamming.
4. Necrolyte - Tanker's worst nightmare

Rhasta, Shadow Shaman

1. Pugna - not only because of rhasta will have more damage from ward. but because rhasta's ultimate are wards that deal normal attacks to units. Decrepifying yourself wont let these rhasta hit you.
2. Silencer - Rhasta can't cast his combo on silencer
3. Blood seeker - silence duration is quite long for blood seeker, hopefully with an ally, to kill rhasta.
4. Omniknight - Repel plus Guardian can counter all rhasta's skills

Rikimaru, Stealth Assassin

1. Slardar - Amplify damage wastes riki's ultimate. Sprint makes it easier for slardar to get out of smoke.
2. Ghost Scepter heroes - riki wont have anything to do to damage and opponent activating ghost scepter
3. Bristleback - I consider bristleback a counter to rikimaru because his back has high damage reduction. Rikimaru's backstab wouldn't be felt much by bristleback though it would still add some backstab damage.

Rooftrellen, Trent Protector

1. Bat rider - No matter how high trent's hp is once bat rider cast 4 or more sticky napalm, it is easy for him to kill trent. Hiding in trees may also be countered by firefly, which destroys trees. Overgrowth doesn't disable bat rider while on firefly.
2. Slardar - makes Nature Guise useless for trent. Thus slardar's AOE stun can stop trent or other melee heroes from damaging him while overgrowth is still disabling him.
3. Necrolyte - for his high HP.
4. BKB or Linken Heroes - use bkb after trent casts his overgrowth. Linken to evade overgrowth.

Rotund'jere, Necrolyte

1. Viper - Since necrolyte needs to come closer to spam because of his short distance nuke-death pulse, you can slow him so he wont do so.
2. Pugna - Netherward damages Necrolyte while he spams thus drains some of his mana.
3. Linken heroes - Reaper can be dodged by linken.
4. BKB heroes - you may be stunned by reaper but you won't have any damage from it if your bkb is activated.

Rylai, Crystal Maiden

1. Pugna - again can kill rylai from rylai's own nukes because of netherward.
2. Mirana - can leap while on frostbite
3. Naix - can rage to escape from frostbite and freezing field.
4. Heroes with stun - can cancel her channeling ultimate.

Slardar, Slithereen Guard

1. Stunner heroes - it is hard to counter this hero alone. One necrolye alone will die first before it can reduce slardar's hp into half. It needs more than one stunner to finish this special hero.
2. Ghost Scepter - can save you for a moment and hopefully teammates will come to rescue you because if not, slardar will just use his sprint to catch you.

Slithice, Naga Siren

1. Ghost Scepter heroes - once you use ghost scepter you'll be free from being ensnared.
2. Axe - will enjoy rotating because of Naga Siren's illusion.
3. Earthshaker - Improved echo slam because of illusion
4. Linken - if you don't want to sleep from Song of siren. But in team fights you'll be whacked alone if you're awake and your allied heroes are awake. I just consider linken to be a great counter for song of siren. You'll need this when defending towers.
5. Tiny - Craggy exterior and avalanche-toss for illusions.

Shendelzare Silkwood, Vengeful Spirit

1. Heroes with escape mechanisms like qop, puck, potm - makes it easy to dodge your magic missile thus, it is easy for them to escape from the dangerous place vengeful brought them.
2. Linken - swap doesn't work if the hero have linken and it's not on cool down.
3. Silencer - once you swap in team fights and the opponents have a nortrom, once he casts silence. They can kill you while allow their allied hero you swapped to escape.

Spectre, Mercurial

1. Bat Rider - bat rider is often my choice to lane with spectre, who would hide inside the forest in times of trouble, can be chased by batrider using firefly.
2. Heroes with summons or illusions - He's consider a great emo killer. So having these with you, he can't have his bonus damage.
3. Ghost Scepter heroes - spectre will rely on hitting you with normal attack so you should have Ghost Scepter for him not to be able to damage you a lot. Dagger has cute damage and wont hurt a lot so Ghost Scepter is a good choice.


Strygwy, Bloodseeker

1. Abaddon - Apotic shield to tank the damage of the rupture. If ruptured, turn the borrowed time on then run for free HP.
2. Centaur - High hp heroes can just walk with ease from your rupture giving blood seeker lesser chance to have bonus speed.
3. Omniknight - Repel if ruptured. Stand if silenced while ruptured. Just heal and repel then run after the silence.
4. BKB heroes - just turn your BKB on to remove rupture.

Sven, Rogue Knight

1. Venomancer - slowing sven with venomous gale, makes sven hit nobody with his God's Strength.
2. Viper - Viper strike slows sven's attack speed.
3. Ursa warrior - Since sven needs to come close to opponents to hit them with God's Strength, ursa warrior would be happy to welcome you and eat you in 3 seconds.
4. Blade mail heroes - Simply activate blade mail when he is in God's Strength to make him feel what it feels like to be hit with God's Strength.

Squee and Spleen, Goblin Techies

1. Chen - can check if there are land mines with his creeps.
2. Gem heroes - are the best counter.

Terrorblade, Soul Keeper

1. Necrolyte - Before soul keeper have the chance to have low hp and sunder anyone, necrolyte will kill him once he reached half HP.
2. Viper - slowing soul keeper wont make him use his sunder because to sunder is to be close to opponents.
3. Zeus - to detect who's the real Terrorblade, thus with zeus range, it's hard for terrorblade also to sunder.
4. Orchid Heroes - Silence terrorblade when he's about to use Sunder. Then say goodbye.

Tiny, Stone Giant

1. High strength heroes - to surviva toss-avalanche combo.
2. Hitter heroes - to abuse tiny's low armor.
3. Necrolyte - for his high HP

Traxex, Drow Ranger

1. Windrunner - Traxex only rely on normal attacks. Windrun will make his normal attacks useless.
2. Tiny - can jump beside him and cast toss-avalanche before he can even cast silence.
3. Barathrum - Bashing traxex constantly so that he can't use his high normal damage or slow.

Ulfsaar, Ursa Warrior

1. Tiny - tiny have the chance to bash Ursa because of craggy exterior. Thus toss-avalanche deals a lot of damage for ursa.
2. Disablers - are needed to kill ursa because if you allow Ursa to attack the whole clash, there won't be anyone standing left in your team.
3. Doom - to cancel Ursa's buffs making his attacks not that painful.
4. Ghost Scepter heroes - to give some time for you to survive while waiting for allied heroes to rescue you.
5. Enigma - Malefice serves a big problem for ursa as well as Black hole.

Viper, Netherdrake

1. Dark Seer - can use surge to chase or run away from viper.
2. Lycan - with 522 speed, viper strike is useless. Lycan can finish viper like dinner.
3. Barathrum - another swift hero, charging viper and using Netherstrike will make viper fun to watch dying.

Visage, Necrolic

1. Windrunner - to escape from Visage's summons. Windrunner can lane against a trilane with visage making them waste their strong lane. Windrunner's windrun can help her run from grave chill.
2. Slardar - can amplify visage to deal more damage reducing Visage's tanking ability.

Vol'jin, Witch Doctor

1. Silencer - can disrupt vol'jin's channeling ultimate and turn Vol'jin's Heal.
2. BKB heroes - to remove maledict.
3. Ghost Scepter heroes - to make the death ward ignore you.
4. Stunner heroes - can stop Vol'jin's heal and ultimate.

Yurnero, Juggernaut

1. Dark Seer - to help team mates run from Yurnero's blade fury through surge.
2. Pugna - can decrepify himself when Yurnero omnislash him.
3. Harbringer - can use astral imprisonment on itself when being omnislashed to waste it. Thus a high int Harbringer can kill a yurnero in one blow of ultimate.
4. Chen - have creeps that gives big problem to Yurnero's omnislash.
5. Trent Protector - Can cancel blade fury with overgrowth.
6. Syllabear - Can cancel blade fury with entangle

Zeus, Lord of Olympia

1. Pugna - Zeus, being a nuker, depends on nuke which Pugna can easily counter using his Netherward.
2. Rikimaru - Wrath of God wont damage an invisible rikimaru. It will only show where riki is. Some is also a big problem for Zeus. He wont be able to use his skills inside it.
3. Chen - can heal the bleeding ally before Zeus can finish him off with wrath.
4. Defiance/Pipe heroes - reduces Zeus's nukes big time.
5. BKB heroes - can ignore Zeus's powerful nukes.

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