Top 5 innovative item builds in Dota 2 that changed the gameplay

Players have been building items that have strengthened heroes in Dota 2 as per their skills, and since the beginning of Dota 1, these item builds have kept on changing.

As the competitive circuit of the game continued to grow, the builds went on to become more flashy and unique, leading to the best brains in the game of Dota 2 discovering newer builds.

Some of the flashiest, most ingenious, and innovative builds have been listed in this article.

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Top 5 innovative item builds in the history of Dota 2

#5 Tranquil Boots Aghanim's Refresher Luna

This Luna build is a single target nuker one, which can kill globally and has short duration cooldowns. With a tanky hero on the frontline for scouting, Luna can target her ultimate, the Eclipse, around that hero and kill any unfortunate opponent hero who faces the full brunt of the attack.

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#4 Armlet of Mordiggian on Legion Commander

This was another Wagamama build, this time on Tresdin, the Legion Commander. Legion Commander's damage in a game of Dota 2 depends a lot on her ultimate, the Duel, which silences the target and forces to attack Legion Commander only for a fixed amount of time.

Whoever stays alive after the confrontation gains bonus damage from the Duel.

Armlet allows LC to have more attack speed, which ensures more Moment of Courage proc chance, providing LC with another lifesteal.

Combining these two with a blademail ensures Legion Commanders are able to handle early solo skirmishes and gain bonus damage without the team's help.

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#3 Roaming Sniper with Aghanim’s rush

Sniper has become very popular in recent weeks thanks to Yapzor and his performance with this hero. Yapzor has shown that Sniper is, in fact, a powerful harasser and with the addition of Aghanim’s Scepter can become a dangerous initiator.

The hero is exceptionally strong in the lane. Thanks to Headshot, he can always out-harass enemy heroes and secure a good farm for his Offlaner.

Shrapnel makes it very hard to fight against Sniper in the lane and during the early stages of the game.

Aghanim’s Assassinate, which stuns for a certain duration, allows Sniper to set up kills and initiate fights in a game of Dota 2 from an insanely long distance.

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#2 Spectre carry with Helm of the Dominator

Spectre is a hero, who has very poor pushing and farming potential, yet becomes strong as the game progresses. This item adds exactly what Spectre lacks.

With the help from Helm of the Dominator, Spectre gains the ability to clear neutral and ancient camps very quickly while also gaining the opportunity to take down towers.

Very often, the Offlaner will leave Spectre alone in the lane of Dota 2, as he can’t really pressure that hero. In the meantime, the former can’t really benefit from it or punish the enemy team.

With Helm, Spectre can immediately start pushing the lane and destroy the tower fairly quickly.

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#1 Manta Style Axe

Niklas "Wagamama" Horstrom first played Axe in this build, and has thus been popularized in professional as well as casual Dota 2 matches as the standard Axe build.

This build skips Blade Mail and goes for Aghanim's Shard instead. Aghanim's Shard causes Axe's right-click attacks to proc Counter Helix.

Attack procs ignore the Counter Helix cooldown, increase the attack speed by 35 and proc chance by 10%. This build is optimized by bolstering Attack Speed.

Manta Style helps, as after the call, it is activated to bring forth 2 illusions which also have the effect of Aghanim's Shard, resulting in more Counter Helix procs.