Broodmother/Guide

Hero

 

Strategy

 

Equipment

 

Gear

 

Talents

 

Relics

 

Responses

 

Sounds

 

Animations

 

Lore

 

Old Abilities

 

Changelogs

 

Known Bugs

 

Gameplay

Playstyle
Broodmother is a hero who can pressure lanes early and scale well into the late game. She can Spawn Spiderlings to help her farm, find kills, and push. After Spin Web, she gains free movement, health regeneration, and movement speed. With Incapacitating Bite which slows and applies miss chance, as well as her Insatiable Hunger which grants bonus damage and lifesteal, Broodmother quickly tears down hapless enemy heroes.
Pros	Cons
Strong pusher from the early game onward. Strong laner with early kill potential. Farms fast and occupies enemy jungle. Good at one-on-one fights. Good escape.	Predictable play style due to constraint of webs. May give enemies extra farm with Spiderlings and Spiderites. Requires good micromanagement to control army. Often forces own team to play 4 vs 5.

Pusher

Broodmother's early game revolves around gaining experience from the safety of her webs, and building up a swarm of Spiderlings for quickly farming the jungle and killing enemy heroes who enter her web.

The first point is always put in Spin Web, as Broodmother is extremely vulnerable outside of webs and requires her to begin setting up webs as soon as possible.

The next few levels are slightly flexible, prioritizing Spawn Spiderlings to improve her killing potential, while leveling Spin Web increases her mobility so she can cover the lane and jungle. Broodmother requires several living Spiderlings in order to efficiently clear waves and farm jungle camps. While enemies can easily kill a single level 1 Spiderling, most will struggle against multiple units. If you can establish your brood early without much trouble, you can begin to put Spin Web at level 3 to control more territory.

Maxing Spawn Spiderlings and Spin web without taking value points in her other abilities accelerates her early game farming and pushing potential. The first level of Insatiable Hunger is relatively weak during the early game without her passive to help lock down target.

No Spiderlings

This highly situational build is ideal for playing against teams with strong area abilities. By focusing on Incapacitating Bite and Insatiable Hunger, Broodmother trades away her fragile ability to quickly farm and push for a more secured lane. Without her signature ability, her ideal early items match the majority of melee agility heroes, because Soul Ring is no longer required to cast her spell. Quelling Blade provides the last hitting power that her brood would normally serve.

By maxing out Incapacitating Bite, the strong slow and high miss chance makes up for the loss of damage from having an active swarm, and Insatiable Hunger's bonus damage and lifesteal further improves her ability to fight without her brood. The miss chance of her passive aids her in farming the jungle safely. By continually attacking each neutral creep in the camp to keep the debuff active on all of them, the neutral creep will have trouble landing hits against Broodmother.

Ability Builds

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

No Spiderlings Broodmother
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	20	25

Talents

Hero Talents
+35% Silken Bola Slow/Miss Chance	25	-0.3s BAT during Insatiable Hunger
+35 Attack Speed	20	400 AoE Silken Bola
+150 Spiderlings Health	15	-7s Spin Web Restore Time
+3 Spin Web Simultaneous Webs	10	+80 Spawn Spiderlings Damage

Notes:

• The health bonus talent affect both Spiderlings and Spiderites.

Tips & Tactics

General

• Broodmother usually braves the solo offlane, as the free movement and regeneration from her webs allow her to face off against multiple enemies.
• Broodmother can apply pressure and threaten to push into tier 1 tower early on in the game.
• An aggressive Broodmother can often take down a tier 2 tower while other players are still farming or pushing tier 1s. Thus, she demands time and gold for detection from enemy heroes, creating space for her team to farm, push other lanes, or kill Roshan.
• Broodmother preys on solitary targets, but suffers against multiple enemies as her lifesteal can generally only replenish the damage taken from a solitary foe.
• Although Broodmother is usually pushing lanes alone, teamfights sometimes require her attention. She should find the balance between pushing, farming, and teamfighting.
• As Broodmother excels in the solo offlane, she can extend to control and farm parts of the enemy jungle.
• If you build your webs around the mid lane, you can effectively farm all four ancient camps, giving gold for items and experience for talents.

Abilities

Spawn Spiderlings

• In the early game, Broodmother needs to use Spawn Spiderlings frequently, which has a high mana cost, in order to build up an effective swarm. Hence, she should purchase Soul Ring, as the regeneration gained from sitting in her Web helps offset the health cost of the item.
• Spawn Spiderlings acts as a ranged nuke, finishing off wounded heroes.
• A key element in jungling efficiently with Broodmother is to maximize the amount of damage this ability does to a creep, while still having the target die before the spawning debuff wears off.
• If the target dies before the projectile lands, no Spiderlings will spawn.
• As a group, Spiderlings deal a surprising amount of damage. In the early game, use them to harass opponents in lane. Later on, use them to push towers when it is unsafe for Broodmother herself.
• Send some Spiderlings to attack enemies so the paranoid ones will start using AoE abilities early to get rid of the spiders. Then, Broodmother and the rest of her swarm can safely finish up the job.
• Spiderlings inflict a debuff with their bite which spawns Spiderites.
  • Spiderites can be spawned from denied allied creeps. You do not need to actually land the deny to spawn Spiderites; just apply the debuff before the allied creep dies is sufficient.
  • The Spawn Spiderlings and Spawn Spiderite debuff stack, allowing you to get both spawns from the same target.
• Spiderites are weaker than Spiderlings, but provide more gold when killed. With {{#show:Spiderite|?health#}} health, they die to many AoE abilities that Spiderlings can survive. Therefore, you should create separate control groups for Spiderlings and Spiderites. Only send in Spiderites after enemies have expended dangerous AoE abilities to lower the chance of them dying and feeding.
• Even though Spiderlings give little gold, constantly feeding groups of them will benefit the enemy team.
  • Spiderlings and Spiderites should be used primarily for pushing and farming. Spiderlings can survive some AoE spells, but not Spiderites.
• Send out Spiderlings to scout, block neutral camps, stack camps, and keep an eye on Roshan.

Spin Web

• Use Spin Web over trees and high ground to give Broodmother escape paths as she receives bonus movement speed and free movement.
• Use Spin Web on top of an enemy tower before diving in on weak heroes. The regeneration and movement speed bonus combined with Incapacitating Bite's slow enable Broodmother to dive on heroes with no reliable escape or stun.
• For maximum effect, webs should be lined up to provide an effective road between valuable locations, such as across the enemy jungle, allowing access to multiple neutral camps and towers.
  • Keep this main highway intact by building a secure line of 5-6 webs, then spinning temporary webs to reach a lane or chase an enemy, then manually destroying them afterwards.
  • Spin Web has global cast range when you connect new web with old one; use this mechanism to easily build your network even from far away, useful with the talent that increases web count.
• Use Spin Web liberally. Do not wait or worry about "optimal" placement, for a moment of hesistation often leads to a missed kill or failed escape.

Incapacitating Bite

• Incapacitating Bite stacks fully with other slows, such as Orb of Venom and Poison Sting from your Spiderlings, hindering enemies chance to escape on foot.
• The miss chance allows Broodmother to fight almost anyone in the midgame given sufficient farm, but is effectively countered by True Strike, break, disarm, or spell immunity.
• You can capitalize on the miss chance to build items that grant evasion or applies even more miss chance like Solar Crest and Radiance to further increase survivability if enemies rely primarily on physical attacks. Alternatively, buy health, armor, and Black King Bar if enemies have ways to land hits on you like with their own spell immunity or True Strike.
• More tips needed.

Insatiable Hunger

• The relatively short cooldown of Insatiable Hunger allows you to use it frequently, useful to farm ancient camps or take down towers.
• At level 2, you can hit heroes with activated File:Blademail icon.png Blademail and lifesteal all or the majority of damage reflected, at level 3 you will out heal the damage reflect.
• Use Insatiable Hunger early since it has long duration, so that enemies will not take advantage to take you down with silence before usage of Insatiable Hunger.
• Use Insatiable Hunger with activated Black King Bar to make sure you can stick to targets, lest wasting duration.
• Insatiable Hunger's attack damage bonus makes Broodmother a fearsome carry, especially in the late game. You should build items that enhance your attacks like Desolator to mow down enemies.

Items

Starting items:

• Tango provides needed health restoration during the laning phase.
• Healing Salve keeps Broodmother in lane by restoring her health.
• Enchanted Mango provides some passive health regeneration and burst mana, enough to finish off an enemy with Spawn Spiderlings.
• Clarity gives mana to produce Spiderlings.
• Iron Branch provides cheap attributes. Use in conjuction with Tango for more healing.

Early game:

• Soul Ring allows her to use Spawn Spiderlings more frequently without fear of running out of mana to harass the enemies, take last hits, and amass Spiderlings.
• Boots of Speed gives movement speed to chase, jungle, or retreat.
• Magic Stick gives burst health and mana, useful to get Broodmother healthy and making Spiderlings. You can upgrade it to Magic Wand later.
• Infused Raindrop provides mana regeneration and magical damage absorption to make Broodmother better at using more abilities and surviving early ganks.

Mid game:

• Power Treads provides attack speed to complement Insatiable Hunger, as well as more survivability through additional attribute bonuses.
• Orchid Malevolence's silence aids Broodmother in killing heroes with escape or disable abilities. The mana regeneration helps in making Spiderlings and webs; it can upgrade to Bloodthorn later on.
• Solar Crest boosts Broodmother defense with armor and evasion. Its active ability helps Broodmother and Spiderlings tear down neutral creeps as well as heroes.

Late game:

• Bloodthorn supplies mana and boosts Broodmother's damage output. Its active ability, Soul Rend, silences the target, as well as giving True Strike and crit to ensure a kill.
• Black King Bar's spell immunity synergizes with the huge lifesteal from Insatiable Hunger to let Broodmother survives in teamfights.

Situational items:

• Quelling Blade makes last hitting easier.
• Hand of Midas, along with bonus experience talent, increases Broodmother's experience gain greatly, allowing her to gain an advantage with early powerful talents.
• Phase Boots gives even more movement speed, letting Broodmother to stick onto targets.
• Vladmir's Offering provides a useful lifesteal effect on both Broodmother and nearby Spiderlings, fully stacking with the effects of Insatiable Hunger. The bonus armor and attack damage greatly increase the ability of Broodmother and her spiders to push lanes and towers.
• Mask of Madness grants cost-effective attack speed to combine with attack damage bonus of Insatiable Hunger for cheap overall increase in damage output.
• Echo Sabre provides intelligence and mana regeneration for Broodmother to Spawn Spiderlings. The attack speed, damage, and slow gives her easier time to hunt down heroes.
• Desolator gives excellent damage and an armor reduction debuff on hit, increasing Broodmother's pushing and killing speed. Use in conjunction with Insatiable Hunger for more damage and lifesteal.
• Diffusal Blade grants useful purge to slow and remove buffs on enemies so they cannot easily escape or fight back. Manabreak also burns mana to deal extra physical damage, coupling with bonus agility to make a great item for carry Broodmother.
• Radiance applies area damage and miss chance during teamfight. With high mobility in webs, Broodmother can reach the enemy backline to cancel Blink initiation.
• Assault Cuirass boosts the attack speed and armor of Broodmother and spiders, while also reducing the armor of nearby towers, allowing her to push faster.
• Manta Style offers bonus attack speed, damage, movement speed, and attributes. Use the active Mirror Image to dispel debuffs such as Dust of Appearance, dodge projectiles such as Storm Hammer, or enhance pushes with illusions.
• Butterfly offers agility, bonus attack speed, and bonus attack damage, increasing Broodmother's carry potential. The evasion, coupling with Incapacitating Bite's miss chance, will give enemies a hard time to bring her down with physical attacks.
• Abyssal Blade grants reliable stun and occasional bashes to further lock down enemies, as well as block chance to protect Broodmother against physical attacks.
• Necronomicon 3 strengthens your pushes with summons and their bonus attack speed aura.