Best carry heroes: A- tiers

In the vibrant arena of Dota 2, carry heroes stand as cornerstones of strategy and gameplay, defining the late-game potential of their teams. Among the diverse roster, certain carries shine brighter due to their unique skill sets and the strategic depth they offer. These heroes, including the versatile Morphling and the durable Medusa, embody the essence of power and adaptability. Their roles in the meta are subject to change with each patch, reflecting the game's strategic complexity and the continuous evolution of play styles.

This article focuses on heroes that, while not at the pinnacle of the meta, play crucial roles in the late game, requiring patience, strategic farming, and precise timing to unlock their full potential. These heroes demonstrate the strategic depth of Dota 2, offering alternative routes to victory and showcasing the importance of adaptability and late-game power spikes in securing wins.

Medusa

Description: The Gorgon, Medusa, takes the field: she seems almost a monolith, a thing of terrible certainty and inevitability. A ranged carry, she plays not to agility and stealth but to a resilience unequalled and an area-of-effect ultimate of explosive power.

This seasoned archer can withstand a barrage that would feel like lesser beings, returning ruin upon her foes with but a glance. Changing the whole dynamic of a team fight from her presence, adversaries will either have to think twice about their engagements or end up petrified.

Latest Patch Changes: Most of the balancing changes worked on durability with Medusa's Mana Shield and efficiency, while the Stone Gaze, in this case, was to petrify. The developer adjusted these factors to balance Medusa's toughness and impact on the shifting meta.

Changes to damage absorption directly impact her survivability by adding to or reducing Mana Shield. At the same time, changes to Stone Gaze could shift her utility in team engagements at different points in Dota 2's long life.

Benefits and Downsides: Mana Shield, paired with Medusa's defensive capabilities, makes her appear almost invincible, as much damage can be absorbed. Her ultimate, Stone Gaze, can deter a whole team, and it has the potential to put many down, making her a precious asset for every single clash. However, such stony resilience does bear its price. Medusa is a maw of resource consumption, her power directly proportional to the wealth of items she can amass.

Thus, her ultimate dependency on mana as a bulwark makes her more susceptible than most to enemies wielding not only abilities but also items or elements that can deplete or burn away her magical reserves to expose her mortal side.

Abilities: Medusa fields a quartet of abilities that befit her mythic heritage. "Split Shot" allows her arrows to fork, striking multiple targets and quickly making her a fearsome presence in fights or while farming. Serpentine projectile Mystic Snake leeches life and mana from the first unit it targets, travelling out to her richer for its journey. Her Mana Shield consists of a magical barrier based on her defence, draining away her source to block a large amount of damage.

Finally, the Stone Gjson gaze petrifies her enemies: those who dare look at her turn into stones, dropping their guard and stopping in their tracks. All these abilities make Medusa what she is: a proof of her divine birth and the epitome of endurance and destruction.

Anti-Mage 

Anti-Mage is probably the most famous hero for breaking the battle matrix with outstanding mana burn and slippery mobility. This guy is a curse to any magic user because this carry loves situations when he can afford to make full use of his unique characteristics.

His playstyle revolves around quick farming and map control, seeking to shut down high-mana enemies swiftly.

Latest Patch Changes: He's already gotten through several recent patches that change the amount of burn from his Mana Break or the cooldown of his Blink ability to calibrate Anti-Mage's abilities and not make him a seriously imbalanced pick. These changes mirror the developer's efforts to keep fine-tuning his role between a potent adversary rather than one that does take over the whole game. 

Benefits and Downsides: The skillset of Anti-Mage is purely designed to break down spellcasters and gather an advantage by quickly reducing the mana reserves of the enemy.

Most notably in the later stages, when his item build allows him to be aggressive in split-pushing tactics and allows him to dictate the tempo of the game.

Moreover, his pathetically weak early skirmishes present a problem, since becoming effective depends entirely on accruing substantial farm. Players must carefully manoeuvre in this crucial phase to make their full potential possible. 

Abilities: His arsenal includes Mana Break—an innate ability to sap mana with every strike, dealing bonus damage. The blink spell, of course, is his signature ability, giving him unsurpassed escapability and initiation potential, no matter how slippery the target may be.

The ultimate Counterspell builds his defences by reflecting spells and increasing the resistance to magical threats. His ultimate, Mana Void, can be devastating in team fights, detonating an area based on the target's missing mana and potentially taking down the opposing team.

Ursa

Ursa is best known for his fierce force in the early and mid-game, where he truly excels in one-on-one engagements, dishing out unparalleled single-target damage. These attributes have given him his intimidating reputation as a brawler at any game stage and make him one of the must-get targets that should never be ignored with impunity.

Latest Patch Changes: Through the mechanics of Fury Swipes, Ursa would have his output damage fine-tuned, leading to it still being high but not overwhelmingly high by balancing it. The duration of Enrage could be tuned so as not to make Ursa overtly tanky while still keeping him as a very durable fighting hero.

Benefits and Downsides: Ursa's ability to handle rapidly rising damage makes him overpower opposing heroes quickly and get the first couple of kills, which are critical for the team's first advantage for controlling an important game objective—Roshan. But he faces heroes with high agility and those who can escape his throws in the late game. The necessity to close the gap to enemies is a tactical hurdle Ursa players must overcome. 

Abilities: His Earthshock provides the significant slow to allow stopping the enemies from escaping or advancing, while Overpower temporarily increases his attack speed to a quick 3x of Fury Swipes. These Fury Swipes are Ursa's bread and butter, dealing increasing damage with each consecutive hit on the same target. And in their most excellent hour of need, the Warrior is provided a moment of responsive relief through Enrage, reducing incoming damage tremendously and purging many forms of debuffs that would otherwise prove fatal.

Phantom Lancer

An elusive master of misdirection, the Phantom Lancer is a carry hero who conjures many illusions to confuse and gang up against his enemies.

This ability to generate many copies of himself serves to amplify his damage output; second, it disorients and divides his target focus. That makes him the perfect candidate to be a total menace on the battlefield, looking for isolated enemies. 

Latest Patch Changes: These will usually come in the form of agility changes, directly to his attack speed and armour or indirectly to the illusion strength. The idea here with these changes is to balance out his late-game scaling power against his early and mid-game presence.

Benefits and Downsides: Phantom Ljsoncer excels at drawing out engagements and in the chaos of scattered skirmishes, where he can scale to be a powerful late-game force but is balanced against weaknesses in the early game, where AoE control and damage can dispatch his illusion army very efficiently. "He always hit them at the peak where the outgrowth of bone protects them. His peak comes from outmaneuvering opponents and not wanting to meet head-on until

Abilities: His kit includes the Spirit Lance, a tool he can use with universal purposes of harassment, quickly slowing and damaging foes, which is an excellent opener in ganks. Doppelganger dispels all of the adverse effects and provides the escapist mechanism along with the deceptive engagement mechanism of its own, confusing the targeting priorities of his enemies. Phantom Rush brings Phantom Lancer into the range for the strike and ensures he can stay on top of fleeing heroes.

Last but not least, his ultimate is Juxtapose, the keystone of all his illusion-based mayhem, giving him a chance to spawn illusions with each attack. These illusions also have the potential to cause vast amounts of damage on their own.

Terrorblade

Demon Marauder Terrorblade is the core hero who plays the role of carry. He is known for his superb pushing ability on the lanes and for dropping structures down at an incredible speed. This fearsome transformation will change his appearance and increase his battle abilities to become a ranged juggernaut on the battlefield. He will time the Metamorphosis into Terrorblade to place maximum pressure on the map and take objectives for his team.

Latest Patch Changes: Recent patches may hint at changes to the cooldown of Metamorphosis or an update to the duration and damage of his illusions derived from Conjure Image. These try to homogenize his power spikes and balance them towards a window of opportunity for the opponents to counter his aggressive pushing strategies. 

Benefits and Downsides: One of the other advantages of the core Terrorblade is his high output of physical damage, more so when it is complemented with his other abilities, like Conjure Image and Metamorphosis, which make him easily siege towers. In addition, he has a high susceptibility to magic damage and burst attacks and must be positioned very carefully, with his team always at hand to assist him, lest he gets taken out too fast. Terrorblade players do not have natural escape mechanisms and, thus, must always think of their movements and engagements. 

Abilities: Terrorblade comes with an excellent combination of offensive and some defensive tools in his abilities. Reflection is an excellent slowing and damage-dealing tool; it reflects an image of his enemies to turn their power against them. Conjure Image bolsters your pushing prowess, granting illusions to farm and fight in your stead. Metamorphosis is at the heart of everything, which gives you a broad and powerful ranged attack. It allows him to shred through enemies and towers alike. Finally, there was Sunder, a dramatic health-swapping ability that could change the course of a battle, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat by trading his life force with that of a foe or ally.