Dota 2 snowballs flowers

Dota 2: How-To Properly Snowball

You have probably heard the term snowballing while playing Dota 2. It means that once a hero gets enough momentum, they become much stronger in comparison to other heroes. Usually, heroes that tend to snowball often are also the best when it comes to gaining MMR, especially in the lower MMR brackets. That’s why it is crucial to learn how to snowball and once you do, how to utilize your capabilities properly. Here is some advice that you can apply to your gameplay.

Laning & General Tips

The first and probably the most important thing is related to laning. It all depends on what position you are playing in the current game. Usually, the snowball heroes are the cores, even though it is possible to see a position 4 NS being godlike just 15 minutes in.

Getting a Good Start & Timing

You can’t snowball unless you get a good start. The snowball heroes are very reliant on particular abilities and items. So, in order to get them ASAP, you need to have a good start. Otherwise, your snowball hero will fall behind big time from the rest of the team, which means that you will most likely lose.

If you are having a bad game, going to the jungle might be a possibility. However, it all depends on the game. Sometimes it might seem easier said than done.

Always remember that timing is everything. Don’t wait until you have 5 items because the enemy Anti-Mage will win the game before that. Always look at the bigger picture and try to analyze whether prolonging the game is right for you or not.

Paying Attention to Your Enemies

Always make sure you know the position, level, and items of the enemy hero that can kill you. One of the worst things that can happen is to lose your tempo just because you haven’t seen that the enemy Bane is level 6 (example).

Choosing the Right Hero

The various snowball heroes have different strengths and weaknesses. Usually, they have a good laning mechanic which allows them to gain an advantage. Shadow Fiend, for example, has an amazing nuke that can secure tons of farm as well as kill potential early on. After you win your lane, you can simply move around with your supports and make stuff happen across the map.

On the other hand, if you’re a hero such as Slark, you will need to get a certain item to shine. Usually, that’s a Shadow Blade or a Blink Dagger. Don’t try to make plays until you get an item that will help you win the game.

Items

After you win your lane, depending on the hero that you play, you have to itemize properly. The best snowball items are usually the most cost-effective ones, even though there are many exceptions here. For example, if you have a good game as a Storm Spirit, you should try to get an Orchid, even though it’s not really the go-to item in the current meta. Dota 2 snowballs flowers A well-farmed SS with a fast Orchid can kill ANY hero on the map early on.

Always try to buy the items that are good for the specific game, rather than the usual items brought on the hero. This is a very common mistake done by new players.

Different Snowballing Positions & Heroes

If you are playing mid, the best thing to do in order to snowball properly is to simply outplay your enemy. However, the times where the mid was purely 1v1 are long gone. There are constant rotations from the supports, so at the end of the day, it all comes down to the proper ganks that should help you gain a significant advantage. Of course, that does not mean that you can’t just straightforward outplay your enemy.

Common snowballing mids are QoP, Storm Spirit, Shadow Fiend, Invoker, TA and Meepo.

Offlane

In order to snowball as an offlaner, the most important thing to do is not to die.

The first thing that you should do is to decide if you have a chance in laning. Most of the time, you will find yourself laning against a melee carry. That’s when you have to try to pull the wave to you as much as possible. You can do that by simply attacking the enemy hero (the so-called creep aggro). As soon as you do that, the creeps on the lane will start chasing you, which pulls them towards you.

If you are lucky enough, you will be able to get two range creeps on the enemy wave. By doing that, you will secure yourself a big wave that will eventually reach your tower.

Some of the best snowball offlaners are Timbersaw, Pangolier, NS, and LC.

Carry

Probably the most notable snowballing carry is Slark. As mentioned earlier, you need to get an item that will allow you to cause havoc on enemy heroes. Until then, you are not going to achieve much by ganking heroes. This applies to other carries such as Ursa and Luna for example.

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Snowballing

Snowballing is an unofficial term, describing a concept where once a hero gets enough momentum, they become much stronger (relative to other heroes at that stage) due to that momentum. The general definition of snowballing can be found here.

In Dota 2, snowballing can be used in many different contexts. When a Hero is said to be good at snowballing, this means that when they gain enough of an advantage (usually in early or mid game) they will completely dominate the enemy team, given the enemy does not have a composition to deal with the threat. When a team is said to snowball, this implies that due to a team’s certain composition, when they acquire an advantage they are able to keep (and increase) said advantage.

Note that Heroes that snowball are not the same thing as carries. Carries are Heroes that scale very well with items (hence they become quite strong late game when they acquire these items). On the other hand heroes that snowball are ones that are able to maintain and increase their momentum when they obtain it.

A very good distinction to make is that a carry hero is able to turn the tides of a losing team if they obtain enough items and/or drag the game on long enough, where as a snowballing hero is generically unable to turn the tides for their own team if they are doing badly, mainly because a snowballing hero needs an initial advantage (i. e. momentum). For similar reasons, a snowballing hero can fall behind the rest of the team in terms of overall usefulness if they do not gain that crucial advantage. Some heroes can be both a carry and a snowballer (Luna is a good example)

Heroes that are known as Snowballers [ edit ]

Nature of Snowballing heroes [ edit ]

Snowballing Heroes are often niche Heroes, that means they have a few superb strengths but also a few severe weaknesses. These Heroes snowball when they are able to cover their weaknesses to an extent that their strengths shine, and this only happens when they get a strong advantage at the start. These severe weaknesses are what also make snowballers fall behind the rest of their team should they not get their initial advantage. Such Heroes are very reliant on situational abilities and/or items, or the need to verse unconventional lineups. They can also be reliant on either jungling or going into a certain lane (usually mid) which creates obvious counters.

Pudge is widely regarded as the best example of a snowballer. His very high tankiness, combined with his insane burst damage and ability to gank, assassinates enemy Heroes as well as singling them out to allow him to completely dominate over the enemy team. This is further amplified by his Flesh Heap ability which grants him bonus Strength whenever a Hero is killed in his vicinity. The sheer tankiness of Pudge (high starting Strength/Strength gained combined with Flesh Heap) makes it very difficult for the opposing team to bounce back and deal with Pudge when he gains an upper hand.

On the other hand Pudge has glaring weaknesses. He is almost completely reliant on landing his Meat Hook for Pudge to do his job as a nuker since he doesn’t have any abilities to attract focus fire to make use of his tankiness. This is due to the fact that his other nukes (Rot and Dismember) require him to be in melee range (that and Dismember is channeling) and Pudge has no mobility combined with a below average movement speed of 285. In other words, Pudge needs to land his Meat Hook very often to bring an opponent into range in order to use his other abilities effectively. Furthermore Rot also deals self damage which makes it even harder to use effectively if you miss your hook and can be taken advantage of by other heroes such as Bloodseeker, Necrophos and Doom. Rot also makes Pudge reliant on a somewhat early Hood of Defiance as it greatly reduces the amount of self damage that Pudge takes.

Pudge’s other weakness is that even though he has somewhat expensive mana costs on his abilities, he has very low starting Intelligence (15) and Intelligence gain (1.5) which results into a very low mana pool. This means that Pudge is reliant on Bottle/Arcane Boots just so he has enough mana to use his abilities. This reliance on certain key items coupled with the fact that Pudge isn’t a fantastic farmer (he only has last hitting to help him farm and his playstyle means he spends more time roaming and ganking rather than actually farming in a lane) means that kills are his main form of income. If he doesn’t get his initial kills in early game, he really falls behind as he completely blows his mana pool after doing a single combo. He is also countered heavily by Observer Ward’s as they greatly aid in the opposing team’s ability to dodge incoming hooks and also help in preventing Pudge getting his much needed runes.

Pudge is also reliant to solo (almost always in mid) which makes it both very obvious and hence easy to counter. Heroes such as Juggernaut, Omniknight and Bloodseeker can be placed mid to counter a Pudge. Alternately a melee carry such as Phantom Assassin can be placed mid to take advantage of the fact that Pudge doesn’t have fantastic lane control and that the Pudge after he obtains his key items will most likely spend more time ganking than harassing the carry in mid.