Dealing With Bristleback
Nothing big has changed with Bristleback in the recent patches, but rather a series of incremental buffs has now put him back in a territory of irritating heroes to deal with. In pubs, his win rate has increased by 3 points from patch 7.03 to 7.06, and in competitive play, Evil Geniuses sealed their victory against Newbee with Arteezy playing a position 1 Bristleback, dealing more damage than SuMa1L’s Ember Spirit.
The last time Bristleback got a considerable direct nerf was back in patch 6.84c, over two years ago, and it was “Increased Base Attack Time from 1.7 to 1.8.” He has been buffed ever since. Over a series of patches since then, the net results of his buffs have caused Quill Spray’s damage cap from 400 to 550, Quill Spray’s radius from 625 to 700—greater than Lina’s auto attack range—and the release threshold of his passive Quill Spray from 250 to 210 (that’s a good thing). Then there have been numerous buffs towards the strength attribute, with a higher regeneration or HP gained per strength. Even though in today’s game there’s a surfeit of counters for Bristleback, it’s not always as easy as it seems.
Heroes
Shadow Demon
I guess that’s one way to counter Bristleback. credit: /u/karamiro
Outside of farming Aghanim’s Scepter, Ethereal Blade, Veil, Aether Lens, and Refresher on a support Shadow Demon, players can just cast any other spell as normal. Soul Catcher can offset the damage reduction from Bristleback’s passive, Disruption offers a brief respite to deal with Bristleback’s teammates, and Demonic Purge can effectively shutter him out of the fight. One reminder is that the Aghanim’s version of Demonic Purge applies Break, which disables Bristleback’s damage reduction passive. There’s no way to counter it. Shadow Demon is a solid counter for Bristleback from the support position. Only if he were effective in nearly every other situation.
Keeper of the Light
KOTL holds a 4.3% win rate edge against Bristleback, and all of it can be attributed to Mana Leak. He doesn’t need to cast any other spells to neutralize Bristleback, who depends on movement and mana. The spell is irritating enough to force Bristleback players to build BKB early, an item that they tend to delay for as long as possible. That’s not to mention Blinding Light, which also completely counters War Path’s benefits.
Legion Commander
After KOTL, Legion Commander holds the 3rd largest win rate edge against Bristleback (Necrophos sits at 2nd place). Using LC as a counter can be counter intuitive to other methods. Whereas one method is to reduce Bristleback’s potency and deal with his teammates first, a team with Legion Commander can pickoff Bristleback early in the fight. Duel forces Bristleback to face his opponents, as opposed to showing his back to them. The better use case for LC is to gank Bristleback and pressure him in the early and mid game, when he depends on his passive more than tanky items to survive.
Phoenix
Phoenix is one of the better hero choices because its a hero thats relevant in the meta. It’s less situational than KOTL, giving its team more options if picked in an earlier phase. Phoenix benefits from Sun Ray dealing damage as a percentage of max health, while Fire Spirits limits Bristleback’s underrated auto attack damage output.
[missing hero: outworld-devourer]
OD is a common counter pick to Bristleback and was picked a few times during the Manila Masters, with little success. But in pubs, OD has a 2% win rate advantage against Bristleback. Arcane Orb ignores armor and magic resistance (but not Bristleback’s passive) and Sanity’s Eclipse has a tendency to just detonate Strength heroes. Astral Imprisonment works similar to Shadow Demon's disruptions as it buys time to kite Bristleback around or deal with his teammates first.
The One Item That’s Not As Great As It Seems
Silver Edge should be the bane of Bristleback. The debuff Breaks Bristleback’s passive, and it’s undispellable. But in the same period of time that Bristleback has been buffed, Silver Edge has been nerfed. From 6.87c to 7.06 its build cost has increased from 4800 to 5550, and its Shadow Walk damage reduced from 225 to 175. Meanwhile, most heroes who can build Silver Edge as a situational item are no longer at the top of the meta. Troll Warlord would have been a decent pick, if he wasn’t just nerfed in both 7.06b and c.
The debuff doesn’t last forever, and it doesn’t disable the evasion from Solar Crest and Halberd. By the time your team has a Silver Edge, Bristleback will have tanky items that make him difficult to kill even without the benefit of his passive. Silver Edge can still help, but it’s just one of the puzzle pieces to solve the Bristleback problem. Other pieces include typical support items, that help put some distance between supports and Bristleback.
FIRST
second?
Nice article
4th??? nice article anyway
5th. good good
not this again...
razor......
I just pick silencer and watch the BB rage.
need new break item
Everyone is forgetting about all heroes' ultimate counter: Doom... if you are willing to pick him, but his ult disables BB for the entire fight, and even more if you build a Scepter.
Bristleback's popularity is so high that they made another thread about that hero..
I never had an issue with him as support. Magic stick and silver edge should be enough to deal with him.
Thats sad that nearly everyone forgets about Doom
DBuff forums already post this shit few days ago...
Yowzieee!
Silencer was so good vs bb
ranged heroes are good. melee heroes just asking to be blown by quill stacks
Bristleback is not as ridiculous as people claim he is. He gets extremely easy countered at high mmr (5k+) due to the fact that people know how to position themselves, zone out bristle early, harass him in jungle, block camps and most of all they have the coordination necessary to focus him down extremely fast, given a silver edge in their team. Hell, if you get him facing you in an average stun, you can delete him with enough focus.
Speaking from experience at ~5.8k mmr.
You forgot Void (his W great against spell spam) and Silencer - (Cast Q and if he spams spells dot stays forever)
I'm not sure how effective Sanity's Eclipse really is. BB has the highest Int gain of any strength hero
Doom in 2017 lul
How to deal with BristleBack? it's ez! just write an article about it in dotabuff, next couple patches BristleBack will be vanished from meta
Feel like Nyx should also be on this list as he can more easily ensure his damage is dealt to the front as well as his mana burn.
What about Brewmaster? He can cyclone bristle every fight until he gets bkb which is late because he won't get any kills.
Pick faceless void...use time dialation.
Chrono, stand infront of bb, use bloodthorne.
Ez
I RENEW MY OATH TO DEFEAT ALL SORCERY
Nyx is very good as Carapace will almost always catch Bristle (due to having no control over Quill Sprays fired by the passive) and due to Bristle's insane intellect gain of 2.8 Nyx will burn so much mana so quickly that Bristle can be literally ignored.
BUFF DOOM VALVE WE NEED TO ELIMINATE THE CANCER
BB solo offlane destroyed my team's defensive trilane before. Got 3 kills out of the lane. He's fun to use, walking up and spraying the opponents to death then walking away like a boss, but such a hassle to play against
I think Axe is a quiet good pick against BB
if u use ranged also can kill it with aether lens
@time
That's really not a sensible counter though. Faceless doesn't often face bristle in lane so it doesn't counter the advantages bristle gets in lane, and it takes a long time to get bloodthorne. It's eventually effective but it's still only a semi counter.
No silencer? no doom? WTF
you forgot the mother of bb counter - dazzzzzzzzzzlllllllllllllllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeee
Necrophos??
Faceless void and elder titan are pretty good counters to bristle
specially the 2nd skill of fv as bb wont be able to spam
No mention of Razor. Razor can easily solo and win the laning stage against bristle and remove him from the map at any stage of the match.
Tower dive killing offlane bristle back solo with Razor. How hard he wrecks him. What bristle does to other heroes, Razor does that to him.
Static Link, Unstable current and Eye of the storm all counter Bristle hard.
As someone who plays a lot of KotL, I feel like the old man isn't the same counter he used to be against the porcupine-pig.
The more recent buff to BB's quill spray range means that harrying him in the laning phase is a slight bit more dangerous, and if you are solo zoning him, you cannot poke him down early game without taking several stationary quill sprays to the face, where as before I could weave in and out of quill range with greater reliability.
If you have another support and/or a carry who are capable in harassing Bristleback out of lane, then mana leak can be a useful laning phase zoning tool against him.
Huskar with scepter (Puts ult) Necro with Ez kill
Ps-Terrorblade can also be used
Assuming you don't want to solo deal with the problem use Terror or Pugna. Hell most teams can deal with him easily assuming you get your coordination or initiation right.
The scrub who wrote this missed Brewmaster.
Bristleback is a completely trash hero in higher brackets like 5k+, maybe pubs and 2k do not know how to play against it.
~6.2k arc spammer
pick kotl.. mana leak, force staff, blinding light .. then ignore bb with no mana and rekt his team mates = profit
Batrider can counter BB as well. Or Vengeful Spirit. Due to lasso and swap. If you can create the situation where you destroy him again and again, you win. BB is a bully. When you outfarm him by around 1k or 2k gold, he is not scary anymore. But if he has the same farm as you, you can't handle him. If he outfarms you, he is a demonic monster that you can't kill. The key is killing him 3 or 4 times until you have better items than him. Batrider and VS can setup team ganks to achieve this.
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If you talk about laning, I think Bane and Lion are two better supports against him. Bane can use Brain Sap to trade damage with him efficiently. Lion can suck out his mana. Antimage is also a worthy note: he can take out BB's mana and just contest last hits like normal melee heroes (Antimage will need plenty of healing coz BB is tankier). There is also Warlock who can make BB suffer just from lvl 1 fatal bonds. Dazzle and Omni are not that good bcoz BB can quillspray away from their spell dmg range. CM and Lich are also quite effective: they have potent mana to repeatedly cast spells and force BB to buy consumables.
@Feeding Frenzy
This is the right kind of thinking when it comes to drafting that rarely comes together in pubs. Batrider himself shouldn't be considered a direct counter to bristle, same with VS. But picking them allows your team to have a playstyle and comp goal that will counter a lineup that would use bristle, and that should be the goal of a draft. Often times picking hard counters to every hero on the other team ends up in a lineup that isn't cohesive and usually is overly greedy, resulting in a team that can't stay ahead.
That being said, having a direct counter that fits your lineup is never unappreciated.
THANK UUUUU