Supporting as Dazzle - 6.88

This is an in-depth guide to everything support Dazzle.

Please feel free to leave a comment or contact me on Steam with any feedback, questions or concerns you might have regarding this guide

The Shadow Priest

Each young acolyte to the Dezun order must complete a series of rites before becoming a shadow priest. The final rite, the rite of shades, is a harrowing spiritual journey through the Nothl Realm, an unpredictable domain from which not all visitants return. Of those who do, some return mad. Others return with strange aptitudes. But all who go there are changed by their experiences. Driven by the need for enlightenment, Dazzle was the youngest of his tribe ever to request the sacred ritual. At first the order refused him, saying he was too young. But Dazzle was not to be dissuaded. Sensing something special in the headstrong young acolyte, the elders relented. Dazzle drank down the sacred potion and sat by the fire while the rest of his tribe danced through the night. In this ethereal dimension of the Nothl Realm, the properties of light and dark are inverted. Thus his brilliant healing light, beautiful to our eye, is actually a sinister kind of evil; and the darkest deeds are done in a dazzling glow. The elders' intuition was prophetic: Dazzle returned to his people as a Shadow Priest like none seen before, with the power to heal as well as to destroy. Now he uses his gift to cut down his enemies and mend his friends.

Knowing when to pick Dazzle

Strengths:

• Powerful multiple hero heal
  
• Shallow Grave can turn the tides of even the grimmest fights
  
• Requires few items to have a large impact
  
• Long cast range abilities
  
• Has powerful Slow & DoT ability
  
• Has good base move speed
  
• Has good impact throughout the entire game
  
• Can be laned effectively offensively or defensively

Weaknesses

• Other supports may offer more lane presence
  
• Doesn't do much damage on his own
  
• Low strength gain
  
• Quickly runs out of mana in early engagements

Dazzle provides an abundance of sustain in both early teamfights and early pushes. He excels in early push strategies and protecting his cores early. A combination of sustain from Shadow Wave and Armour from Weave make fighting into a Dazzle lineup difficult quite difficult early.

While Dazzle may have many strengths as a hero pick, there's many heroes and scenarios that Dazzle struggles greatly against such as pick off oriented lineups/ heroes and lineups with a lot of Crowd Control[dota2.gamepedia.com]

Heroes that Dazzle struggles against

Axe

Axe is considered a rather hard counter to Dazzle because with the use of Culling Blade he can kill anyone under the effects of Shallow Grave. Axe in teamfights doesn't really care much about fighting into enemies with a Weave armour bonus as all of his damage output is pure or magical.

Ancient Apparition

Ancient Apparition with the use of ice blast can completely nullify all of Dazzle's healing spells, making a large and very important part of Dazzle's toolkit completely useless. Also, even if Dazzle Grave's a hero affected by the ice blast debuff, there will be no way to save the hero, they're very likely going to die immediately after the grave ends.

Doom

Doom with the use of his ultimate can completely take Dazzle out of a fight. When Doomed, Dazzle has two options: Stick around and likely die, or abandon the fight and run away to go heal. Dazzle is a fantastic target to Doom as he becomes completely useless when silenced.

Storm Spirit

Storm Spirit is a very natural Hex and Orchid carrier, allowing him to easily jump ontop of Dazzle and kill him quickly and without worry. In teamfights, Storm will always be able to easily zip into the backlines of a fights and pick off Dazzle before he has a chance to get off his spells. Storm also does a lot of magic damage, making him not worry too much about fighting into Weave armour.

Laning in the Safelane

When laning in the Safelane position, Dazzle is often found to be most useful stacking camps and pulling to keep the creep equilibrium. In between doing this, try to harass and zone out the offlaner. Evaluate whether it's more important to focus on your carries ability to farm (via stacking and pulling) or whether it's more important to pressure the offlaner and move around the lanes. Many carries work very well with Dazzle in the safelane, below are a few listed examples.
(In-Game Dazzle safelane guide)

Legion Commander

When laning with the help of a Dazzle, Legion Commander is able to easily run down enemies, without fear of dying. Also, thanks to Shallow Grave, it's next to impossible to lose a Duel. Dazzle's minus armour and survivability skill set pair very well in ramping up Legion Commander's physical damage output and allowing to her to play crazy aggressive and come out on top.

Phantom Lancer

Phantom Lancer on his own is a fairly survivable carry thanks to his Dopplewalk ability, but with help from Dazzle, when PL jumps on top of a target, together they are able to quickly nuke them down with Shadow Wave and Phantom Lance. If the target isn't dead yet, chasing will be a breeze with the duo's slowing abilities.

Meepo

Meepo is a pretty level dependant hero who can quickly snowball is he gets enough farm quickly. Dazzle is able to help him in doing this by making frequent hard camp stacks and sacrificing his levels for Meepo, as Dazzle doesn't need many levels to be useful. If a Meepo clone is low, Dazzle can buy it time to Poof or TP out. Also, if all Meepo clones are on top of an enemy, Shadow Wave acts as a powerful Nuke.

Terrorblade

Terrorblade is an extremely frail carry in the early game, even with help from his Sunder Ability. Dazzle is able to keep Terrorblade healthy and can allow him to dish out massive amounts of damage while under the effects of Shallow Grave. Poison Touch also acts as a powerful slowing tool, allowing Terrorblade to better chase enemies. Also, Weave greatly amplifies Terrorblade's damage output.

Huskar

Huskar is a hero who is notorious for dealing more damage, the lower his HP, because of this, Dazzle's Shallow Grave allow's Huskar to quickly rip enemies to shreds without fear of dying. Huskar is also a hero who very desparatly needs armour, Dazzle's Weave greatly helps him in this regard.

Slardar

Slardar is a pretty reckless hero, who's frequently in the front of engagements; this is dangerous business for any hero, especially when Slardar has his Sprint active. Dazzle can help to make up for lost survivability. Also, Slardar's Amplify Damage greatly increases Dazzle's skill set of completely physical damage.

Suggested Skill build:

Laning in the Offlane

Generally when laning Dazzle in the offlane, an aggressive playstyle is best adopted. Early points in Poison Touch and Healing Wave can create kills, while also protecting the lives of your ally. When playing more aggressively as Dazzle, you're not going to have more than one point in grave for sometime, so keep this in mind and plan accordingly. Dazzle has a fairly adaptable skillset and because of this can successfully lane with many different heroes. This being said, certain heroes are still much better able to abuse this usefulness early. It's very important that you do you best to control the creep equilibrium using the medium camp beside the lane. Focus on denying creeps and not stealing last hits from your offlane partner.
(Dazzle Offlane in-game guide)

Axe

Axe is a very hard hero to deal with for safelaners just by himself, but when paired with Dazzle on the offlane Axe becomes a much harder force to stop. Together they can chase down enemies using Poison Touch and Battle Hunger, cut creep waves and stay topped up on HP thanks to Healing Wave and safely contest and stack creep camps to accelerate farm.

Phantom Lancer

Phantom Lancer lacks the survivability to be a solo offlaner. He only has a mediocre escape which until highly leveled has a long cooldown and his overall skillset just isn't up to snuff. This all changes in the company of Dazzle however. Together they have powerful nukes, slows and incredible damage when an enemy hero is surrounded by illusions and Healing Wave is cast.

Ursa

Ursa is a very aggressive early game hero, using his Fury Swipes and Overpower to make quick work of enemies. With aid from an Orb of Venom and Dazzle's ]Poison Touch, Ursa becomes a killing machine. If a small skirmish ever starts to turn on itself, Dazzle's Healing Wave and Shallow Grave can easily allow Ursa to flee or turn the tides.

Broodmother

Broodmother is a hero who generally prefers to lane solo due to her high survivability and ability to dominate lanes via an XP advantage. However, when an enemy is surrounded by Spiderlings, Healing Wave acts as a powerful nuke, making quick work of already dieing enemies. Dazzle can de-ward enemy sentries and provide the little bit of extra killing power and protection that Broodmother needs to truly thrive.

Faceless Void

Faceless Void is seen as a strong offlaner, even when left to his own devices. He's a difficult hero to kill, but lacks much kill potential of his own. With Dazzle's Poison Touch and an Orb of Venom, the duo can run down enemies with ease, while staying healthy in terms of HP.

Suggested Ability Build:

Hero Ability breakdown

As a supporting hero, Dazzle often finds himself quite level starved throughout most of the game, because of this, learning how to best allocate the few skill points you have is very important.

Poison Touch - Slow/Stun & DoT

Poison Touch is a powerful slowing ability that does physical damage over time. Since the damage type is physical, it works very well in tandem with Weave's minus armour. A value point or two is often recommended in the early game, but maxing your other abilities first will almost always prove as more useful.

Shallow Grave

Shallow Grave is Dazzle's trademark skill, and for good reason. There is only one ability in the entire game that game kill a target that is affected by Shallow Grave, that ability being Axe's Culling Blade. Maxing this first is often recommended due to it's large increase in cast range and massive cooldown reduction.

Shadow Wave - Multiple target heal & Nuke

During fights, you should be trying to stay out of harms way while casting this ability whenever it's off cooldown. Shadow Wave is Dazzle's bread and butter skill, allowing him the possibility to make large damage contributions while also keeping his allies in good health. This is a very powerful ability and consider maxing it first instead of Shallow Grave, or keeping it equally leveled.

Weave - AoE Armour Buff & Debuff

Dazzle's Weave is an odd skill in the sense that it's one often cast before teamfights even break out. However, sometimes it's best cast on more enemies than allies. Try to predict when a teamfight might break out and evaluate whether it's best to use it before or during. Another important tid bit about this spell to remember is that it provides vision when cast, thus making it an effective tool to scout fleeing enemies or enemies hiding in fog.

Itemizing - Casual item pick-ups

Magic Wand/ Magic Stick

Having a casual Magic Stick can provide you with a suprising amount of survivability and additional mana to work with. In times where you want feel it's beneficial to grow your mana pool or feel that you need more HP, consider investing and upgrading your Stick to a Wand.

Urn of Shadows

Urn can be a great way to boost your HP pool while also providing additional sustain for yourself and your allies. Urn is usually best put to use when purchased early as a boots upgrade substitute.

Infused Raindrop

Raindrop is an incredibly powerful item providing you with not only a sizeable amount of passive mana regen, but it also increases your early game survivability quite substantially through providing magic damage block.

Wind Lace

Wind Lace increases your move speed allowing you to move across the map faster, making your slightly harder for enemies to catch you and also providing Dazzle more mobility in teamfights.

Itemizing - Choosing your boots

Arcane Boots

Arcane Boots will remedy many of your early mana problems, providing you with an overall larger mana pool to work with and of course the Arcane Boots mana replenish ability. Arcane Boots can be especially effective if you have many mana hungry allies.

Tranquil Boots

Tranquil's aren't seen on Dazzle too often but in situations where you find yourself constantly needing to use your Shadow Wave to heal yourself instead of your allies, tranquil's can save you a lot of mana because you have plenty of passive regen and won't need to heal yourself when out of combat.

Power Treads

Power Treads can be a great choice for boosting Dazzle's early HP making him harder to kill and less susceptible to being picked off. Using Tread Swapping[wiki.teamliquid.net], Power Treads offer a very similar amount of mana to Arcanes with the added benefit of additional tankiness. Treads are a much more self oriented boots pick up, so consider whether it's more beneficial for you to be harder to kill or for your team to have the sustain arcane boots provide.

---

Boots of Travel

Boots of Travel are a late game luxury item for Dazzle, allowing him to have a teleport scroll on hand at all times. These should not be purchased until the late game as buying these is essentially paying 2000 gold for a teleport scroll and that gold can likely be better spent on other items.

Itemizing - Core Items

Observer Wards

Vision wins games; I can't even begin to stress the sheer importance of this item. Make an attempt to be buying wards frequently and placing them both when it is safe and makes sense.(Comprehensive warding guide)

Force Staff

Force staff is an incredibly useful tool when supporting. It can be used to save yourself or allies, or even help to chase or push enemies closer towards your team.The utility this item provides is incredible.Along with it's amazing active ability, Force staff also provides Dazzle with some extra INT and health regeneration.

Aether Lens

Aether Lens not only grows you mana pool and provides you with a large amount of passive health regen, but it also increases the cast range of ALL of your spells meaning that you will be further out of the lines of fire, increasing the amount of spells you will be able to get off in a fight.

Glimmer Cape

Glimmer Cape helps to not only boost Dazzle's effective HP, but it also provides a helpful tool for shielding allies. Glimmer cape can also be cast just before TPing to make for an easy getaway.

Solar Crest

Solar Crest is a very powerful tool in not only amplifying Dazzle's damage, but it's active ability grants armour and evasion to allies making base sieges and tower pushes much safer. Solar Crest also grants passive armour and evasion to Dazzle, greatly increasing his survivability.

- Situational Core items -

Mekanism

Though Mekanism is a powerful healing tool, quite often other items such a Solar Crest or Force Staff will actually offer more utility. The quicker that you are able to purchase a Mekanism, the more useful and valuable it is going to be. Past about 30 minutes, I wouldn't recommend buying a Mek.

Lotus Orb

Lotus Orb provides Dazzle with a large amount of passive armour and health/ mana regen. Along with this, Lotus also provides a way of purging some debuffs off of allies and reflecting incoming spells. In games where enemy heroes have lot's of single target spells, Lotus Orb can put in a lot of work.

Vladmir's Offering

Vlad's is an item that can be a very valuable buy when your team is 5 manning a lot as it provides a lot of sustain to your allies. Vlad's also provides an armour aura, making it a good buy against physical damage carries.

Gameplay tips

Some key factors when playing a support Dazzle are Trust, Positioning and selflessness.
It's very important to communicate to your allies that you will Shallow Grave them just at the right moment, that you will always have their backs in healing and that you'll give your life for there's when it makes sense. Reassure your allies to keep fighting, even when low on health, and throw down the Shallow Grave at the last second, saving their life. Building this trust takes time in a game, but is very important aspect of a successful Dazzle. In fights, you never want to be in the front of the fight, always try to stand a good bit back, hidden in trees or fog, casting as many of your spells as possible. The more of your spells you are able to get off before dying in a fight, the better. (Guide to better supporting)

Early Game

During the Early Game, the best advice I can offer is to ALWAYS CARRY A TP SCROLL. Shallow Grave is an incredibly powerful saving tool, especially in combination with Shadow Wave. If you feel that your lane is doing well and can continue to do so without your further aid, consider roaming the map and trying to score kills using Poison Touch. The key to successful roaming is communication with your allies, let them know what you're doing and when you're doing it. Better communication will always net you more success when roaming. While roaming, try to make stacks in between ganking.

Mid Game

During the mid game, it's very important to not be getting caught out a lot. This will not only lead to you falling behind and the enemy snowballing, but also it will likely lead to angry, flaming teammates which is never any use when trying to win a game. Stack camps when you can, but try to fly under the radar sitting behind your carries while they farm, and soaking up XP and farm where it makes sense. Consider saving for buyback if you think it could make the difference in an upcoming fight.

Late & Ultra Late Game

In this stage of the game, your life doesn't mean much if your get off both Shallow Grave and Weave in a fight. Even still, try to stay alive for as long as possible and kite enemy carries the best you can. Though your life doesn't mean all too much, saving for buyback is often crucial. Shallow Grave can be a game winning ability so buying back just to save/prolong the life of your carry is often times very beneficial. At this point in the game, not getting caught out is everything. Try to hide in fog and tree lines when outside of your base and always have your carry's back.

[Cheshire]

Thanks! Sorry for the mistake.

[nochat]

its Aether Lens by the way, not Lense.

[xxDangerxZonexx]

Cool

[Cheshire]

I'm currently working on an Extension of the "Knowing when to pick Dazzle" section with in-depth analysis of heroes that he struggles against and why. Hopefully this fits what you're asking for @xxDangerxZonexx

[nochat]

best guide ever, your a legend cheshire :gg:

[xxDangerxZonexx]

I like this guide alot. Could you include times when to pick him and when not to pick him also.

[Cheshire]

Also, I apologize to all readers of the guide, it would seem that the in-game item guide links were broken. I went through and re-did them so they should be working now.

[Cheshire]

Thank you all for the kind words and feedback, I very much appreciate it!

[Cheshire]

I think that Dazzle is a hero is a hero whose skill build varies quite a lot from game to game. It really depends on what heroes you're playing with and which you're playing against. Personally I really like a point in Poison Touch early almost every game, it helps to zone the offlaner and it's a great tool to allow you to roam on mid. I also generally max Shadow Wave before Grave too.The reason that I suggest maxing Grave first is because it's just generally safer to do. The improved cast range on Grave allows you to consistently get the spell off in fights, often changing the tide of battle. Where as Shadow Wave can be quite powerful in sustaining pushes and aiding in fights. Shadow Wave I don't feel is a game changing spell, whereas Grave feels to me like it is.

[Vylix]

Comprehensive Dazzle guide! I'd recommend all 2k-3k supps to read this as this will immensively boost their performance in their games!