Firelord and fiends to own NE

[slayer]

Lately i've been finding games against really difficult, when i go ghouls they go hunts, when i go gargs they go warden/parda and hippos, when i go fiends they just mass archers/DotTs. It seemed there was nothing i could do, especially with the damn NE fast expo. Recently i've tried abusing the NE players set counter system with a strat new to 1.17.

The strat put simply is mass fiends with the firelord. Now most people would say "wtf are u crazy fiends get owned by archers!". This is true as a NE player can greatly outnumber ur fiends with his archers although archers also have very low hp and die extremely fast to FF. Not only this but because of their small size they tend to bunch up. This makes them the perfect targets for Incinerate. 60 damage per unit killed really adds up when dealing with archers.

The firelord works very well with fiends, the late alter of the fiend build is no disadvantage and lava spawns aid in fiend FF as well. There are two ways of using the FL with this strategy. Either go Soul Burn/Incinerate, this great for disabling the warden and panda and should he get chippo later then it can effectively disable chims while mass murdering and archers and hippos! The second build is of course Lava Spawn/Incinerate. This build is great for creeping and early pushes, level 2 lava spawns are like an extra fiend! It can tilt early battles in favour of ur fiends and away from the archers.

As for second heroes the decision is up to u, personally i find the lich to be effective against the weak archers but it's personal preference. The naga also works well as she can stop the archer being FF from running back allowing u to hit more units with Incinerate. Also soul burn and frost arrows can make the DH pretty useless even in meta form. Don't forget dryads don't autocast abolish magic anymore so NE players actually have to micro now

Try the strat for urself and ur post feedback here, gl with games against NE.

[Laif]

Nice strat ^^, if the NE player is good he won't group up his archers, but hey, thats extra micro your making him use while you don't have to use as much, so nice!

[seYo.]

this seems to be a great strat !
soul burn can stop early harasses / creepjack attempts very easy
incinerate for archer damage sounds great.
maybe dk second for healing / speed boost
or maybe... HEY! i just got this idea..
if you use dark ranger second, with black arrows.
when an archer dies, does incinerate negate black arrow effect ? will the skeleton still be summoned? becouse if you can get a skele up from that archer, now that would be something...

[Metavirulent]

I find FL fiends to be pretty similar to DR fiends. Physically weak hero with nice skills. Nice idea though.

[Fr0st]

Can someone post a replay showing some of this stuff please?

[HellraiseR]

i found dk/fl fiends more effective

[ZIPMAN21]

Cant wisps dispell the firewalls summoning thingy

[slayer]

Yeah wisps can dispel the firelords summons, i usually go soul burn as i find it more effective. So far i'm just experimenting/theorycrafting a lot with different combos, my favourites so far are:

FL/DK the healing is always a good thing but it can be difficult to save a fiend in time with lots of archer FF.

FL/Naga is great for disabiling heroes and because incinerate leaves so many weak units forked lightening can almost always kill 3 archers per cast.

FL/lich works well for mass unit murdering, incinerate and high level nova can really screw with archers.

Finally the FL/DR, i'm not sure about black arrows and incinerate working but with the new patch i'm seen a fair amout of players going solo heroes whether it be solo warden, DH etc. With this combo and both soul burn and silence at least level 1 u can constantly prevent any hero from casting spells until of course both ur heroes run out of mana. Imagine a DH with no mana burn and a warden with no FoK/ss and 50% reduced damage, pretty useless to me

[wowzers]

i dont see how this works well. i mean wisps = no more summoners and no more mana.

[slayer]

Like i said there's two ways of using him. I prefer to use soul burn, this being the only skill consuming mana he will usually have enough to cast it. This is especially true with the aid of statues. There's no problem with wisp detonate as there's no summons and it's fairly easy to evade to stop them detonating on ur hero. Not only this but it will greatly slow the NE tech should he have to continually produce wisps to detonate. Although he's an agility hero he has a large mana pool like the SH so spamming spells should be easy.

[Ac)Zep]

ummm sorry to say but neutral heros are shity with UD : P UD has no need for neutral heros CL or DK would work so much better ><.

[slayer]

Neutral heroes can be very effective with UD it's just that not many people use them. The reason i thought of this strat is very simple.

Firelord and fiends own archers and DotT, fiends own hunts, fiends own dryads, fiends own hippos. There's really nothing NE can do during tier 1 and two to counter it. Infact the only NE units that can beat this is with MGs countered by aboms, bears countered by destroyers and chims countered by fiends with soul burn or mass gargs. Gargs will beat chippo with the help of incinerate. With two buildings (crypt and slaughter house) and the firelord u can counter practially every NE unit.

[Grom_Icecream]

Can you post your replays so far using this strat, slayer? They don't have to be outstanding examples or anything, just typical games would be fine. It sounds like this would have a perfect synergy. Incinerate + fiends work together naturally obviously and incinerate tends to counter the counter to fiends.

[slayer]

I'll try to get some reps but i can't guarantee anything, seems like most of the games i play now are against human and UD. The only games i've played against elf (not to many unfortunately) were mostly on non-tavern maps (played 2 on Lost temple and one on two rivers). The one i played on twisted medows i didn't save. I may just play a custom against a friend and post the rep here. It's not a hard strat to do so u can try it for urself without much difficulty.

[AnCouLer]

Hehe, I find it nice. But I accually never use a neutral hero with UD.. especially a first hero. Maybe as second on a 2v2 or something... but in solo, nah

[Lanky]

Ud altar heros are alot better imo. I dont sacrifice whouldnt sacrifice dk/ cl vs archers.

[Paoh]

nice, unique strategy for UDs having a FL first.

[DuckDeath]

hmm.. this sounds interesting. Hey Ancouler, nice avatar you've earned yourself