A week ago I released a team Roshan% speedrun,
where the goal was to kill Roshan as early
as possible.
We ended up doing pretty well, finishing him
off a good 40 seconds before Creeps spawned.
As it was a co-op run, it was very fun theorycrafting
with the rest of my team, and I thought it
would be pretty interesting to outline and
explain how we developed the run.
If you’re not interested in the process,
and would just like to see the run itself,
feel free to skip to the time listed below,
or watch the original run which I’ll link
in the description.
Otherwise, let’s get right into it!
When we initially were theorycrafting team
comps we immediately knew we wanted Ursa.
Fury swipes is just too good for rosh, so
he was locked into the comp right away.
We then considered who else would be on the
team.
Characters like Troll Warlord or Shadow Fiend
came up, as they had pretty respectable rosh
clear times as well, but the run felt very
unfinished.
After that we considered it from a different
angle.
Rather than taking the 5 characters with the
fastest solo rosh times, we tried using characters
who would best support the character with
the fastest rosh time, which was Ursa.
After pretty thorough testing we finally settled
on a team consisting of Ursa, Beastmaster,
Abaddon, Legion Commander, and Ogre Magi.
We settled on these characters’ because
they all had attack speed buffs, and were
all melee.
The strat we used centered around boosting
Ursa’s attack speed in order to stack fury
swipes as quickly as possible.
Considering that we wanted to kill roshan
at the earliest point in time possible, which
would be before creeps spawned, we would only
have access to one ability per character,
and starting gold.
Therefore we took Inner Beast on Beastmaster,
Curse of Avernus on Abaddon, Press the Attack
on LC, Bloodlust on Ogre, and obviously, fury
swipes on Ursa.
Now that we had chosen the heroes we would
be using, and their respective abilities,
we had to figure out what item sets were optimal.
We considered two main builds for Ursa, the
first consisting of Quelling blade, Two Slippers
of Agility, and two iron branches.
The logic behind this set was that since we
would be stacking attack speed heavily on
Ursa, he would be getting many uses out of
Quelling Blade.
The second set we considered was gloves of
haste and two iron branches, which we hoped
would maximize the amount of times fury swipes
was procked.
After thoroughly testing both builds several
times, we came to the conclusion that the
Gloves of haste build was slightly faster,
as Ursa would reach enough stacks to kill
roshan more quickly than the quelling blade
damage could compensate.
Now that Ursa was decided, figuring out the
item sets for the other characters was quite
a bit more simple.
Abaddon was a bit of a special case though,
and as such I’ll cover him last.
We decided to give all other characters quelling
blade, as both Inner Beast, and Curse of Avernus
affected all allies, and as such each individual
“supporting” member would be procking
quel quite often.
Next, we knew we wanted a blightstone, as
the reduced armor would be a slight boost
to all of our non fury swipes damage, and
would further optimize the damage our supporting
heroes.
We decided to put that on LC, because she
deals slightly less damage compared to beastmaster,
so other items would be just slightly more
efficient on him.
We also needed some healing to survive the
fight, and smoke, so we could get to Rosh
pit as quickly as possible.
After several tests we narrowed it down to
2 Salves which would be needed to heal those
who were tanking.
Ogre took these items, since his DPS was the
lowest by far, as well as his movespeed.
After that, all characters spent their remaining
gold on as many slippers of agility, and branches
as they could afford, in order to squeeze
out as much quell damage as possible.
Finally Abadon.
We initially had him take the same item set
as Beastmaster, however after several tests,
we found that due to how we were pathing to
rosh pit, ursa always made it there first,
which meant that he either had to wait for
the rest of the team, or begin tanking, which
usually resulted in him getting stunned.
We solved this by giving abadon boots, which
allowed him to reach rosh first, apply curse
of avernus immediatly, and then tank.
Now for the run.
We smoke as soon as the run begins, And ogre
immediatly casts Bloodlust on Ursa, allowing
him to reach Rosh pit and begin stacking Fury
swipes at the earliest possible time.
Since bloodlust lasts longer than it’s cooldown,
this means it will always be on the Ursa,
even though Ogre is lagging far behind.
You can see that even with Bloodlust, ursa
is slightly slower than Abadon with Boots,
so Abadon arrives at the pit first.
As soon as Rosh uses Slam, LC uses Press the
Attack on ursa in order to purge the Attack
speed debuff.
Throughout the fight the supporting characters
take turns trading off Aggro, using salves
as needed, so that Ursa is never targeted,
and at risk of being stunned.
Due to all the buffs, it only takes about
20 seconds after Ursa reaches the pit to kill
Rosh, with 40 seconds left till creeps even
spawn.
Now for the big question: Is this applicable,
in a normal game of Dota?
The answer:... probably not.
At least not without some tweaks.
A team consisting of Ogre Magi, Legion Commander,
Abaddon, Beastmaster and Ursa, probably wont
do so well in ranked, or even All Pick.
However You could easily swap out one or two
of the heroes we used, for a character that
makes your team more balanced, in exchange
for a slightly slower rosh time.
While we were interested in reaching the absolute
earliest Rosh kill possible, taking 50 seconds
or even a minute to kill rosh will still net
you the kill far before creeps spawn, and
you might be able to do so with a far more
balanced team.
For example, switching out Legion Commander
for Death Prophet only reduces the time to
kill Rosh by around 10 seconds, but now you
have a team which is able to push, and team
fight far more consistently.
While getting Rosh this early might not even
be worth the trouble, if you are at all interested
in this sort of strategy, I highly encourage
you to make a team of your own, and attempt
to make it viable!
If you think you can do it faster I also encourage
you to try, so I’ll put a link to the Dota
2 speedrun site down below, where you can
submit your own runs.
If you guys have any ideas or suggestions
on how to improve this run, or for future
videos, I encourage you to post them!
I always read the comments so I’ll be sure
to try out your ideas.
If you enjoyed the video leave a like, and
if you’d like to see more Dota or Speedrunning
themed content in the future feel free to
subscribe!
I have plenty of both planned for the next
few weeks, so keep an eye out for that.
As always I hope you enjoyed the video, and
I’ll see you in the next one.
