NOTE: I do not own the ideas written below.
In hero picking, I often pick heroes that would counter the opponent's heroes. I don't pick heroes just because they are strong. Having a line up that counters the opponent's main bread and butter won 90% of the time than just picking 'imbalanced heroes'.These are lists of some Counters for almost all Dota heroes. I wont say that these counters are the best. These are only suggestions on how you can counter heroes that you find hard to defeat. I'll be focusing on the heroes' skill disadvantage. Items, like BKB, linken, manta, etc, wont be considered. I will consider only some items that the heroes are really dependent upon like blink dagger for Earthshaker. But, the rest are heroes without defending items. These heroes are arranged alphabetically.
Abaddon, Lord of Avernus
Some Hero Counters for Abaddon:
1. Axe - Before Abaddon can trigger his borrowed time, axe can finish him off with Culling Blade.
2. Doom - Borrowed time wont be triggered while doomed
3. Lina - Perfect timing can kill Abaddon without letting him use his borrowed time
4. Lion - same reason with lina
5. Viper - simply slow him while he's using his borrowed time then finish him after
7. Heroes with hex, euls, or skadi
Aiushta - Enchantress
Some Hero Counters for Aiushta:
1. Bane Elemental - uses magical damage for Aiushta, Untouchable wont affect Bane for he is not doing normal attaks. Thus, when Aiushta uses her heal(nature's attendant), sleep her first.
2. Lion - Disable her before she got to use her heal
3. Zeus - he can have constant damage to Aiushta without having problem with Untouchable. With Aiushta's low hp, Zeus wont have any problem.
4. Lina - 1 combo, Aiushta's dead
5. Tinker - Spam spells then rearm
Aggron Stonebreaker, Ogre Magi
Some Hero Counters for Aggron Stonebreaker:
1. Omniknight - Repel serves a big problem for ogre magi
2. Bradwarden - Multicast can't kill heroes with High HP.
3. Necrolyte - Ogre Magi has high hp but with reaper, Necrolyte can kill him with ease.
4. Medusa - Aside from high hp of strength heroes, Medusa has mana shield that will make her hp not affected by multicast that much.
5. Nerubian Weaver - Weaver wont be killed by one multicast. After getting multicasted weaver can just use its time lapse and bring back its full hp.
6. Heroes with Defiance
Akasha, Queen of Pain
Some Hero Counters for Akasha:
1. Puck - silence wont make her blink or use her other skills making akasha vulnerable to death due to her low hp apparently.
2. Crystal Maiden - bite wont allow her to blink more than 3 secs.
3. Doom - Same reason with puck, silence.
4. Blood Seeker - Akasha wont blink while ruptured. If she does, the damage would be fatal and seeker will find her apparently because of thirst. Silence, also thus serves big problem for Akasha.
5. Lion - With lion's disabling ability, akasha will have a hard time escaping.
Anub'arak, Nerubian Assassin
Some Hero Counters for Anub'arak:
1. Puck - Vendetta is useless if Puck auto-activated its Phase Shift
2. Slardar - Invi heroes' worst nightmare
3. Low intelligence heroes - after the nerf made to anub'arak, low intelligence heroes wont be much affected by mana burn.
Anub'seran, Nerubian Weaver
Some Hero Counters for Anub'seran:
1. Lion - can finish anub'seran without letting him escape or use time lapse.
2. Slardar - Can chase Anub'seran's quick move speed and using Amplify Damage, there's no escape for Anub'seran.
3. Tiny - can finish Anub'seran in one combo
4. Doom - Anub'seran can't use his survival mechanisms when doomed.
5. Puck - silence and coil wont let him escape
Atropos, Bane Elemental
Some Hero Counters for Bane Elemental:
1. Pugna - Bane Elemental needs a lot of mana and Pugna's ward can damage him a lot.
2. Earthshaker - ES's long range of stun can waste his ulti
3. Tidehunter - Levi can wake up anytime within the length of sleep
4. Doom - will make an skill dependent, like bane, useless
5. Puck - silence or coil can easily disable atropos and waste his fiend's grip
Azwraith, Phantom Lancer
Some Hero Counters for Azwraith:
1. Slardar - AOE stun can detect who's real and amplify damage will make dopplewalk useless
2. Earthshaker - illusions help Earthshaker do more damage
3. Leshrak - Pulse Nova, Split earth, Lightning Storm are skills that can wipe out Azwraith illusions as well as him.
4. Lina - AOE spells can wipe out illusions and Laguna can wipe him out of the game.
5. Kunkka - can wipe out Azwraith's illusions having 3 skills that can do AOE, particularly his splash normal damage.
Balanar, Night Stalker
Some Hero Counters for Balanar:
1. Ezalor - Use mana drain on Balanar. With his fast move speed, he'll drain out of mana in no time.
2. Axe - has high hp and wont die of spamming void. Axe's counter helix will give more damage to Balanar while attacking him.
3. Bradwarden - Also a high hp hero. He wont die by spamming void. Attacking him will give more damage to Balanar too.
4. Necrolyte - Though he may be silenced, the silence duration wont make him die. Thus, Balanar's high hp is countered by Reaper's Scythe.
Banehallow, Lycanthrope
Some Hero Counters for Banehallow:
1. Strygwyr - rupture his 522 move speed.
2. Enigma - he can't escape from black hole
3. Rasta - shackles him to death
4. Bane Elemental - Grip him to death. Use enfeeble to make his normal attack useless.
5. Pugna - decrepify makes him or your allied heroes ghost and he wont be able to attack them.
6. Ursa - can deal more damage than Balanar in one on one situation
7. Ghost Scepter Heroes
Barathrum, Spiritbreaker
Some Hero Counters for Barathrum:
1. Pugna - Decrepify makes his ulti useless
2. Omniknight - Guardian Angel wont give you any damage too from his ulti
3. Any stunner - will make him useless in team fights if perfectly executed.
4. Necrolyte - strenght heroes' worst nightmare
5. Ghost Scepter Heroes
Black Arachnia, Broodmother
Some Hero Counters for Black Arachnia:
1. Dark Seer - ion shell and vacuum can both damage brood while inside the web. Surge when brood activates life steal. Dark seer makes brood mother a total trash.
2. Slardar - makes web useless
3. Earthshaker - has stronger ultimate because of the spiderlings
Boush, Tinker
Some Hero Counters for Boush:
1. Balanar - Balanar can survive a lane against tinker. Silence can make tinker run. Void will make you catch him. Void can cancel travel.
2. Doom - For silence purpose also, and canceling travel.
3. Blood Seeker - For silence too
4. Puck - For silence too and travel cancel. Dodge missile by using phase shift
Bone Clinkz, Bone Fletcher
Some Hero Counters for Bone Clinkz:
1. Slardar - makes windwalk useless
2. Pugna - Bone Clinkz is dependent on making normal attack for damage. Decrepify will make him do 0 damage for certain period of time.
3. Lion - Disable Bone Clinkz to death.
4. Ghost Scepter Heroes
Bradwarden, Centaur Warchief
Some Hero Counters for Bradwarden:
1. Necrolyte - Reaper for his High HP.
2. Venomancer - slowing him wont make him use dagger, it wont make him catch his opponent for stomp or double edge. Poison Nova eats his hp because the damage dealt is by hp percentage.
3. Viper - Brad can't touch viper because of massive slow.
Chen, Holy Knight
Some Hero Counters for Chen:
1. Earthshaker - Chen's creeps add to Echo Slam's damage.
2. Kunkka - With kunkka's massive AOE, Chen's creeps will be gone in no time.
3. POTM - Ganking heroes with escape mechanisms are quite difficult for chen.
4. Doom - Devour chen's creeps.
5. Enchantress - Enchant Chen's creep to have it your own.
Crixalis, Sand King
Some Hero Counters for Crixalis:
1. Silencer - Epicenter can easily be canceled by Silencer wherever silencer is. Furthermore, silencer's last word makes crixalis's impale epicenter combo impossible to be done.
2. Venge - Stun can cancel epicenter. Epicenter casted or not can be swapped away.
3. Lion - has disable for epicenter and ground stun for sand storm.
4. Batrider - Impale wont hit batrider while on firefly. Firefly does great damage making sandking run instead of using his sand storm. Flaming lasso also cancels epicenter.
5. Puck - silence cancels epicenter. Phase shift can dodge impale or epicenter.
Darchrow, Enigma
Some Hero Counters for Darchrow:
1. Silencer - Notrom can cancel his Black Hole anytime and anywhere as long as global silence is not on cool down. Last word wastes Black hole too.
2. Puck - silence or coil can cancel Black Hole. Be sure to use waning rift behind enigma for you not to be joining the Black Hole party.
3. Venge - Swap having long range can stop black hole anytime though Enigma has BKB.
4. Doom - cancels Black hole though Enigma activated BKB.
5. Earthshaker - Echo Slam will deal more damage because of Eilodons
Darkterror, Faceless Void
Some Hero Counters for Darkterror:
1. Omniknight - Guardian Angel makes Chrono Sphere useless for Darkterror. He can't damage anyone because he only relies on normal attack to deal damage.
2. Naga Siren - Sleep everyone after void used his Chrono Sphere.
3. Vengeful Spirit - Swap void away from Chronosphere to lessen the time he can attack freely.
4. Luna Moonfang - Void usually use his timewalk to chase or set fights. After using his time lapse to chase or set the fight, activate Eclipse. He'll be the one to die.
5. Ghost Scepter Heroes
Ezalor, Keeper of the Light
Some Hero Counters for Ezalor:
1. Vengeful Spirit - Since ezalor would be sniping his charge, swap him to prevent him from defending.
2. Zeus - Ezalor has low hp and spammers like zeus hurt him a lot. Thus, you can use wrath of god to cancel Ezalor's recall.
3. Naix - will eat ezalor's low HP. Rage wont be able to stop naix from eating Ezalor.
4. Strygwyr - Silence ezalor and rupture if he tries to run away
Furion, Prophet
Some Hero Counters for Furion:
1. Rikimaru - He won't be damaged from Furion's Wrath of Nature. He can blink strike out from Furion's sprout. He can silence Furion to cancel his teleportation skill.
2. Spectre - He can dagger out from furion's trees. He can chase furion if he teleports.
3. Earthshaker - More damage of echo slam because of force of nature skill.
4. Heroes with Orchid, tango, or Quelling Blade.
