Abaddon/Guide

Hero

 

Strategy

 

Equipment

 

Gear

 

Talents

 

Relics

 

Responses

 

Sounds

 

Animations

 

Lore

 

Old Abilities

 

Changelogs

 

Known Bugs

 

Gameplay

Playstyle
Abaddon is a versatile hero who specializes in absorbing damage and shielding his teammates. Unlike other supports, Borrowed Time allows Abaddon to be in the middle of the fight, converting heavy attacks back into health. His Mist Coil and Aphotic Shield makes it frustratingly hard for enemies to bring down his allies, and their low cooldowns can turn fights around at crucial moments. Curse of Avernus slows foes hit by your sword, giving them a hard time running from you and your allies (since you can hit them with no worries while Borrowed Time is off cooldown), at the same time increasing your allies attack speed and movement speed if they also hit the enemy. Although Abaddon's common build seldom allows him to do enough damage to kill enemies alone, he can still provide cheap nuke damage while played as support, and under favorable circumstances, he can also be played as a semi-carry.
Pros	Cons
Tanky support. Low cooldowns. Can fulfill multiple roles. Has the lowest cooldown strong dispel. Great support for beginners.	Low mobility. Low starting armor. Long cast animations. Mana dependent. No hard lockdown.

Support/Durable

• Abaddon is most commonly played as a support whose main purpose is to protect its carry from a hard disable with Aphotic Shield and heal them regularly with Mist Coil. In this way, it is sometimes unwise to rush in the middle of a battle despite your ultimate, because you lose your usefulness if you get disabled or silenced. In such situations, Curse of Avernus can be rather useless during teamfights as you won't attack enemies much. Don't skip it entirely as it will help push towers at the very least.
• You will probably want to max Aphotic Shield first, not necessarily for its added damage block (though it helps) but mostly for its cooldown reduction. To further help you save your allies, you may consider purchasing an Aether Lens as your first major item, after disassembling your Arcane Boots.
• If you don't want to build Aether Lens, Tranquil Boots and a Soul Ring should solve all your mana problems and enable you to never go back to base. As a melee support that doesn't especially require mobility tools, you become a natural aura carrier. Get an early Headdress and a Buckler that you can later upgrade into a Mekansm. If you're having mana problems, you may opt to skip the Mekansm and build instead a Vladmir's Offering and a Crimson Guard with the Headdress and Buckler. Drum of Endurance is also nice and the early Wind Lace is always good to have.
• Though not always necessary, never forget Force Staff and/or Blink Dagger when playing support.

Aggressive

• Abaddon can be played very aggressively, especially in the early game, in a manner very different from his support role. An early point in Curse of Avernus will allow you to trade hits very effectively with the enemies. The slow will help your slower partner catch up to land their spells and extra attacks. This can be even more difficult to be dealt with if you start off with an Orb of Venom as it fully stacks with your curse. As of 7.33, Abaddon is often played as a carry due to the Universal hero type giving him great scaling and Radiance becoming much easier to build.
• Maxing Mist Coil early can catch your opponents off guard. Though extra levels in it do not come with the extra benefit of cooldown reduction, the DPS it provides compared to Aphotic Shield is still better, since its cooldown is already so low. Maxing Mist Coil will also help you self-trigger your shield thanks to the increased self-damage, and its cast range is decent. Finally, although extra levels in shield are nice, it becomes useless if there is nothing to detonate it to harm your opponent. All-in-all, it should be near-impossible for a lone enemy to get near you without taking heavy damage when maxing Mist Coil.
• Auras are still nice on an aggressive Abaddon, as are most utility items like Eul's Scepter of Divinity or Blink Dagger. But you may aim for the more expensive ones if you're farming, such as Assault Cuirass, Shiva's Guard, or Scythe of Vyse.

Ability Builds

Generic Abaddon
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	20	25

Aggressive Abaddon
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	20	25

Talents

Hero Talents
400 AoE Mist Coil	25	-1 Curse of Avernus Attacks Required
95 DPS Borrowed Time Immolation	20	+100 Aphotic Shield Barrier Amount
+40 Mist Coil Heal/Damage	15	+80 Curse of Avernus DPS
Aphotic Shield provides +15HP Regen	10	+15% Curse of Avernus Movement Slow

Tips & Tactics

General

• Abaddon is renowned for his multipurpose spells capable of manipulating how much damage the enemy is able to deal to his team, and turn it against them. In this way, Abaddon is not only able to protect and heal his teammates, but also possesses offensive potential capable of dealing damage to enemies as well.
• Abaddon's versatile skill set allows him to be played as either a durable or a support, depending on what his team needs. He is able to gear his skill build towards protecting teammates and shielding them from harm, or for more offensive purposes to give himself more damage output.
• In general, Abaddon should build aura items to benefit his allies since he can stay alive longer in fights with Aphotic Shield and Borrowed Time.
• Beware that Abaddon has long cast animations for Mist Coil and Aphotic Shield. Positioning and planning ahead are crucial for allowing Abaddon to get his spells off in time.
• One of Abaddon's early weaknesses is his poor agility, resulting in low base armor (and thus vulnerability to physical damage despite being a strength hero) and poor attack speed (hampering his carry potential). Rectifying his armor weakness is crucial in order to make him effective in any role he plays, though improving his attack speed is dependent on if he is playing as a carry.
• Abaddon is generally played as a safe lane support due to the vast survivability his skills provide for his team. His role in the safe lane is to control lane equilibrium through pulling creep waves, as his ability to harass the enemy offlaner is hampered by being a melee hero. He also stacks jungle camps for his carry to farm later, and acts as a babysitter capable of protecting his lane against enemy aggression with his powerful survivability spells. As a support he focuses on building mana items to allow him to continue casting his spells, and HP regen items to fuel the cost of Mist Coil, then utility items to give his team an advantage in fights. His skill build aims towards maxing out Aphotic Shield and Mist Coil first in order to maximize his early nuking power while also protecting his teammates.
• As a durable, Abaddon gears towards tankiness and perhaps damage output, forcing the enemy to treat him as a threat so that he can take advantage of his ultimate. He still deals damage with Aphotic Shield and forces the enemy to engage him and wasting their nukes and disables on him, and then negating that damage with Borrowed Time.

Abilities

Mist Coil

• Due to its low cooldown, Abaddon can use Mist Coil multiple times in an engagement at all points of the game.
• Use Mist Coil to heal, to nuke, and even to break Linken's Sphere or Roshan's Spell Block.
• Beware of the health cost when using Mist Coil too many times, as it may leave Abaddon low on HP that may decrease his effectiveness in fights when Borrowed Time is not ready.
• The health cost of Mist Coil deals pure damage, allowing it to interact with Abaddon's other abilities.
  • Using Mist Coil under Aphotic Shield will not deal damage to Abaddon as the shield will absorb the self-damage, adding to its threshold, i.e. it may burst earlier.
  • The self-damage from Mist Coil can proc Borrowed Time automatically if it takes Abaddon below 100% HP.
  • The self-damage from Mist Coil will actually heal Abaddon during Borrowed Time.
• Abaddon can use Mist Coil along with Aphotic Shield on a currently tanking lane creep or himself to boost their survivability, prolonging the push.
• Use Mist Coil to secure last hits at range.

Aphotic Shield

• Aphotic Shield applies a strong dispel, removing stuns as well as all otherwise dispellable debuffs, making it strong against long-duration disables like Sacred Arrow, Fiend's Grip, Chaos Bolt because it immediately ends the disable so targets can act again.
• Take advantage of Aphotic Shield's area damage to farm and push.
  • Placing Aphotic Shield on the leading creep in an attacking wave shields it from damage for a short time, and then inflicts area damage on the enemy creep wave once it bursts.
  • Similarly, using Aphotic Shield on Abaddon while farming neutral camps allows him to deal nuke damage after shielding himself from their attacks.
• Use Aphotic Shield on an allied creep with low HP to scare enemy heroes away from the last hit, or they will suffer shield damage in the process, giving Abaddon enough space and time to deny the creep after the shield bursts.
  • Abaddon can also attack the creep himself to make the shield burst if the enemy hero does not do so.
• Use Aphotic Shield with Mist Coil to turn ganks around by stopping allies from taking damage and healing them, forcing the enemy to commit additional time and attacks, and then turning that damage against them.
• Aphotic Shield helps Abaddon and allies dive towers by preventing them from taking damage from tower hits for a short time, and the bursting shield deals nuke damage to the enemy.
  • When the enemy's health falls low enough, Aphotic Shield's target will just have to make sure to stay within range for the shield burst to finish off enemies without having to stop to use abilities or attack.
• As Aphotic Shield does not damage invisible units or those in the fog of war, try to keep vision on the enemies when the shield bursts.
• Unlike most other sources of damage negation, Aphotic Shield blocks taken damage after reductions. Therefore, magic resistance and armor can increase Aphotic Shield's potency, as the shield will not waste on damage that is being reduced; e.g., a 200 magical damage nuke on a target with 50% magic resistance only deals 100 damage to the shield.
• Using Aphotic Shield upon the same target before its duration has ended automatically detonates the shield before reapplying another, increasing damage output in team fights especially with talents that reduce cooldown and increase shield health.
• Use Aphotic Shield on Abaddon at the beginning of the game to contest enemy bounty runes. Most heroes will have to back away from the potential double burst damage and double damage negation if Abaddon time the first Aphotic Shield early enough to have the second Aphotic Shield ready by the zero minute mark.
• Use Aphotic Shield to dispel Spirit Vessel's Soul Release that decreases Borrowed Time's healing.
• Take advantage of Aphotic Shield's damage absorption to use certain items like Blink Dagger and Bottle which continue to work.

Curse of Avernus

• During the laning phase, get a value point in Curse of Avernus, as the slow can allow Abaddon and his allies to gain a speed advantage over gank targets.
  • Defensively, Curse of Avernus inflicts a ganking enemy with the debuff to prevent them from easily chasing allies.
• Curse of Avernus also affects Roshan and enemy buildings, increasing allied units' attack speed.
• Abaddon can apply Curse of Avernus to buildings under glyph.
• Abaddon works well with items and abilities that provide additional slows, as they stack with Curse of Avernus.
• The illusions of Abaddon can place Curse of Avernus's debuffs.
• Keep in mind that Curse of Avernus also applies a silence should the enemy hero takes the debuff more than 4 times, use this advantage to prevent the enemy from retaliating back with spells.
  • This means illusions can also silence the enemies regardless.

Borrowed Time

• Borrowed Time often wastes enemy time and abilities on Abaddon, as he may heal back up and force them to engage him all over again when their abilities are cooling down.
• Abaddon can dive towers in the early game with Borrowed Time, as he can simply ignore tower and creep damage in his pursuit.
• Use Mist Coil during Borrowed Time as it will heal Abaddon instead.
• During Borrowed Time, Aphotic Shield does not absorb any damage, as it treats any incoming damage as a heal after reductions. Therefore, using Aphotic Shield during Borrowed Time not only removes debuffs from Abaddon, but also leaves him with a fresh shield at the end.
• Enemies will often attempt to avoid attacking Abaddon during Borrowed Time in an effort to prevent him from healing, but Abaddon can force the issue by taking advantage of enemy area abilities and attracting the attention of the enemy's towers and creeps. Abilities such as Macropyre, Midnight Pulse, and March of the Machines can deal area damage outside of the casting hero's control, and will heal Abaddon during Borrowed Time.
• Abaddon may use Borrowed Time through any disables, excluding silence and hex, snapping himself out of most enemy disables, including targeted channels like Dismember and Fiend's Grip.
  • After freeing himself, Abaddon may use Aphotic Shield to bail allies out of enemy disables also.
  • However, persisting area disables such as Ice Path and Chronosphere will disable Abaddon again after he has used Borrowed Time.
  • Break stops Borrowed Time from going off by itself, so Abaddon will have to activate it manually.
  • Watch out for break and silence or hex at the same time which shut down Abaddon's chance to use Borrow Time completely.
• Abaddon will not heal from the damage instance that procs Borrowed Time, so he may die if an attack brings him from above 100% HP to death in a single instance, as Borrowed Time does not get to proc.
  • Therefore, Abaddon should manually use Borrowed Time way before reaching the threshold when heroes with fatal abilities like Laguna Blade or Coup de Grace decide to go on him.
  • This also means, insta-kills such as Culling Blade will not save him.
• Due to its relatively low cooldown, Abaddon may use Borrowed Time to tank tower hits during pushes himself if he wants to save mana by not using Aphotic Shield. Furthermore, it also heals Abaddon reliably, so use it early at about half HP instead of waiting for it to trigger.

Items

Starting items:

• Tango regenerates health so Abaddon can stay in lane.

• Healing Salve also restores health to Abaddon.

• Clarity fuels Abaddon's powerful Aphotic Shield in the laning stage of the game, so he can get last hits and damage the enemies at the same time.

• Iron Branch gives Abaddon cheap attributes. It builds into Magic Wand, or combines with Tango to heal him more.

• Enchanted Mango increases health regeneration, gives burst mana to use Aphotic Shield.

Early game:

• Magic Wand provides Abaddon increased attributes and burst health and mana restoration, giving him much more survivability and allowing him to use his abilities more.

• Boots of Speed give Abaddon movement speed bonus, as he needs good positioning in order to make use of his abilities. It also allows him chase down enemies with Curse of Avernus easier.

Mid game:

• Phase Boots give great movement speed and armor so Abaddon can run at the enemies.

• Solar Crest's armor and mana regeneration give Abaddon survivability and mana sustain, and the active allows Abaddon to either enhance a teammate's survivability against physical attacks, or induce an armor debuff and slow on enemies to reduce their ability to fight.

• Manta Style illusions can stack Curse of Avernus, allowing a core Abaddon to near-instantly cripple an enemy.

• Radiance increases Abaddon's attack damage, and the burn aura both improves his flash-farming and gives enemies incentive to target him.

Late game:

• Assault Cuirass greatly increases Abaddon's armor and attack speed, giving him physical survivability and increased damage output to allow him to carry effectively. The aura also greatly benefits teammates, and reduces enemy armor, allowing Abaddon and his team to deal more damage.

• Shiva's Guard increases Abaddon's armor and intelligence, improving his tankiness and mana pool. The passive aura greatly reduces enemy attack speed, which stacks with Curse of Avernus, and the active ability inflicts minor damage and slows enemy movement speed as well.

• Guardian Greaves boost Abaddon's survivability and support his team. The health and mana replenishment bring amazing sustainability, and the dispel allows Abaddon to remove debuffs from himself that may be preventing him from participating effectively in fights. The aura also gives Abaddon and his teammates enhanced survivability especially when they are running low on health.

• Abyssal Blade grants a powerful bash that synergizes well with Curse of Avernus' attack speed bonus, and can stun enemies on demand to improve Abaddon's lockdown.

Situational items:

• Orb of Venom allows Abaddon to apply a slow with his attacks, and stacks on top of Curse of Avernus. The item fits an aggressive Abaddon who prefers to gank regularly in the early game.

• Tranquil Boots increase movement speed to give Abaddon better positioning, allowing him to get his abilities off more easily. The health regeneration allows Abaddon to recoup the health cost of Mist Coil, ensuring that he never puts himself at too much risk when using it.

• Soul Ring adds strength and health regeneration, as well as mana at the cost of health; the item synergizes well with Tranquil Boots which pay for the health cost.

• Urn of Shadows gives Abaddon a way to heal allies and himself after using Mist Coil. It also sustains him with mana regeneration so he can use his abilities more.

• Drum of Endurance gives Abaddon attributes and mana regeneration, as well as blessing his team with movement speed and attack speed, giving them an edge in ganks and pushes.

• Blink Dagger grants mobility to chase or engage, and paired with Manta Style lets Abaddon initiate onto vulnerable enemies and silence them. It is also not muted while Borrowed Time or Aphotic Shield are absorbing damage, making it potentially useful for escapes.

• Echo Sabre is a great item to ramp up Curse of Avernus attacks and silence enemies while giving some early mana regeneration.

• Blade Mail can be a powerful semi-carry item that fills in several of Abaddon's deficiencies. The bonus armor increases his tankiness and the bonus damage increases his damage output for fighting and farming. The active can allow Abaddon to use his HP pool offensively during fights, discouraging the enemy from focusing him down when he does not have Borrowed Time activated.

• Heaven's Halberd's increased strength, status resistance, and evasion give Abaddon much more survivability; and, the active allows him to disarm an enemy carry during a fight, preventing them from contributing.

• Vladmir's Offering is a solid item on Abaddon, no matter what role he takes. Its aura grants armor, mana replenishment, lifesteal, and bonus damage to Abaddon and all nearby allies, making it a powerful item to have present in any fight.

• Pipe of Insight gives Abaddon greatly increased magic resistance and HP regen, allowing him to shrug off magic nukes and vastly increasing his survivability. The active allows Abaddon to further protect his teammates through shielding them from the enemy's magic nukes for a short time, synergizing with Aphotic Shield.

• Crimson Guard is a powerful utility item that benefits Abaddon both as a carry and a support. The damage block, increased HP and bonus armor make Abaddon much harder to bring down with physical damage, and the active gives all nearby allies enhanced damage block and armor, increasing their resistance to physical damage for a short duration.

• Lotus Orb can be a very powerful utility support item that further allows Abaddon to keep his teammates alive. The item gives Abaddon increased armor for tankiness and mana and HP regen for self-sustain, allowing him to always be ready to participate in fights. Using the active on himself or a teammate discourages the enemy from casting single-target spells on them, as they can be turned back against the enemy; if Abaddon is not the target of the Echo Shell, he can also remove any disables placed on the targeted ally with Aphotic Shield, effectively using the enemy's disables against themselves with no effect on Abaddon's team.

• Aghanim's Scepter extends the duration of Borrowed Time and allows Abaddon to shield his allies from damage while healing himself.

• Heart of Tarrasque grants a massive bonus to strength and health, ensuring Abaddon can survive against the heaviest damage. By staying alive, he can deal sustained damage with Radiance and Aphotic Shield in fights.

• Octarine Core bolsters Abaddon's survivability by giving him a larger health and mana pool, and allows him to use abilities more liberally with cooldown reduction.