Strategy
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 hides herself and her army under invisibility, while gaining 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 |
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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 her webs and requires her to begin setting up her webs as soon as possible.
The next few levels are slightly flexible, prioritizing Spawn Spiderlings over Spin Web slightly improves her killing potential, while prioritizing Spin Web increases her mobility, allowing her to move in and out of the jungle easily. Broodmother requires several living Spiderlings in order to be able to efficiently clear waves and farm jungle camps, while it is relatively easy for enemy laners to kill the single Spiderling spawned by level one Spawn Spiderling, but if a brood has been successfully established with level 1 Spawn Spiderlings, Levelling Spin Web provides the webs to completely cover the lane, or to expand out into the jungle.
Maxing Spawn Spiderlings and Spin web without taking value points in her other talents 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.
Broodmother without Brood
This highly situational build is ideal for playing against teams with strong AoE spells. By focusing on Incapacitating Bite and Insatiable hunger, Broodmother trades away her fragile ability to quickly farm and push for a more secure lane. Without her signature spell, her ideal early items match the majority of Melee Agility heroes, because Soul Ring is no longer required to cast her spell. Quelling Blade or Iron Talon provides the last hitting ability that her brood would normally serve, and Stout Shield or Poor Man's Shield adds a cheap extra layer of defense.
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 allows her to farm the jungle safely. By continually attacking each neutral creep in the camp to keep the debuff active on all of them, the neutral creep damage is greatly reduced.
Ability Builds
| Pusher Broodmother | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 20 | 25 | |||||
 |  | | | | | | |  |  |  | | | | | | | | | | |||||
| Broodmother without Brood | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 invisibility 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.
- Beware of enemy Sentry Ward in lane that reveals your invisibility. As a response, you should buy your own Sentry Wards to detect and destroy the enemy wards.
- Attempt to draw aggro from enemy creeps while invisible to check for the presence of nearby Sentry Ward.
- Try to place Sentry Wards hidden from enemy vision, such as among trees, to minimize the chance of your own wards being seen and taken out.
- Use Tango or Quelling Blade to take out Sentry Wards quickly, rather than wasting time attacking which allow the enemies to reach your wards first.
- 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 cast Spawn Spiderlings frequently, which has a high mana cost, in order to build up an effective swarm. Hence, she can purchase Soul Ring, as the regeneration gained from sitting in her Web can offset the HP 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.
- Spiderlings inflict a debuff with their bite which spawns Spiderites.
- Spiderites can be spawned from denied allied creeps.
- The Spawn Spiderlings and Spawn Spiderite debuff stack, allowing you to get both spawns from the same target.
- Even though Spiderlings give little gold, constantly feeding groups of them will benefit the enemy team.
- Spiderites are weaker than Spiderlings, but provide more gold when killed. With {{#show:Spiderite|?health#}} health, they die to many AoE spells that Spiderlings can survive. Creating control groups to control each group separately is highly recommended.
- Spiderlings should be used primarily for pushing and farming, but kept away from enemy heroes until they have already spent their AoE spells.
- 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.
- Use Spin Web on top of an enemy tower before diving in on weak heroes. The regeneration and movement speed bonus combined with Broodmother's slow is very effective for diving 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.
- 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.
- Damage from enemy heroes removes the free pathing that webs provide for {{#show:Broodmother#Spin Web|?value8#}} seconds, but this time can be bypassed by spinning a new web at your current location.
- Consider Phase Boots to regain some movement speed when hit.
Incapacitating Bite
- Incapacitating Bite stacks fully with other slows, such as Orb of Venom and the Poison Sting from your Spiderlings, making it almost impossible for your enemies to escape on foot.
- The miss chance provided by the bite allows Broodmother to fight almost anyone in the midgame if she successfully outfarmed the enemy team, but is effectively countered by true strike, break, disarm, or magic immunity.
- 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.
- 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; you can target it on enemy wards to quickly take them out.
- Healing Salve keeps Broodmother in lane by restoring her health.
- Enchanted Mango provides some passive health regeneration in lane and later builds into Soul Ring with components from the Side Lane Shop.
- 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.
- Sentry Ward provides True Sight to help dewarding. Enemies will have a hard time keeping up detection with their own Sentry Wards since Broodmother farms extremely fast to deward back.
Mid game:
- Phase Boots allows Broodmother to pass through Spiderlings when attacking enemies. It also provides some movement speed when she took damage in webs.
- 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 allows Broodmother to quickly chop down enemy wards. She can also use it to cut down trees when stuck or escaping to the jungle. It can upgrade to Iron Talon to boost jungling speed.
- Poor Man's Shield bolsters Broodmother's defense against early harassment. It also gives some agility which help her to last hit.
- Hand of Midas, along with the level 10 talent, increases Broodmother's experience gain greatly, allowing her to gain an advantage with early powerful talents.
- Power Treads provides attack speed to complement Insatiable Hunger, as well as more survivability through additional attribute bonuses.
- 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.
- 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, increasing Broodmother's pushing and killing speed. Use in conjunction with Insatiable Hunger for more damage and lifesteal.
- 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.
