Disruptor is now the king of supports. How to play him?

He burst into the meta without warning.

With patch 7.35d, amidst supports like Oracle, Crystal Maiden, Venomancer, and Mirana, a newcomer emerged - Disruptor. In just a dozen days, the hero's pick rate almost doubled, and the win rate soared from 47-49% to 55% in public games at 7000+ MMR. In this post, we'll talk about the top support of the meta.

Why is everyone suddenly talking about this hero?

In 7.35d, the hero received a nice buff: the duration of the attack and movement speed slow (by 100%!) increased from 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4 to 0.4 seconds. But if we look at previous patches as well:

In patch 7.34, Thunder Strike hits everyone in Kinetic Field if the ability's target is inside the field;

In the same 7.34, the talent for Thunder Strike's radius was replaced with "+10 damage to Thunder Strike with each hit," which is much cooler;

In 7.35, they increased the duration of the Thunder Strike with the shard, increased the radius of the ultimate, and strengthened talents.

With the enhancement of Thunder Strike, Disruptor began to lane well, and it was the lane that was the main problem for Disruptor. In the current meta, especially in matchmaking, nobody wants to lose lanes with Disruptor: a lost tower gives the enemy a lot of space, frees up supports, and Disruptor can't jungle to comeback.

Previously, it went something like this: Disruptor came with a not-so-strong carry, lost the lane badly, and for another 10 minutes ran around at level 4-5, miserably gaining experience for the ultimate. After all, the hero has neither control nor the ability to quickly and safely push a wave, nor the ability to stand solo to defend a tower. And while poor Disruptor is grinding to level 6, enemy Squirrel or Treant terrorize the map, controls the lanes, and finds ganks regardless of your actions. And all because of problems in the lane!

But now Disruptor is already at level three - a strong fighter. Thanks to 0.4 seconds, he will guaranteed to win 4-5 pokes when trading with the enemy - and Thunder Strike will also deal about 165 health (taking resistance into account).

Otherwise, it's the same old Disruptor with a cool ultimate and a unique ability called "Glimpse," which you use to send enemies back to base after a kill, save your carry from ganks and prevent small/big spots from being blocked.

Moreover, let's look through the lens of the meta: picks include Slark, Anti-Mage, Zeus, Brewmaster is popular, Enigma is cool, and Faceless Void is still relevant. If we take all the heroes of Dota, more than half of them are countered by Disruptor. He's too versatile after the lane: he interrupts ability casts, provides silence for 6 seconds in an area (!), and now also reduces DPS for typical right-clickers. Wow!

Now, how about skill build?

If facing a hero with cheap dispel (Abaddon, Oracle, Slark), it's better to take Glimpse at level one - with it, you can even get first blood at the rune, or rush to the first wave to disrupt. If the enemy has no way to dispel debuffs, then Thunder Strike is almost indisputably taken.

Take a look at Miposhka's skill build, where Disruptor is his favorite hero on the pro scene. And almost a 59% win rate, by the way!