Vengeful Spirit is a sleeper support that will gain you MMR in 7.34b

Guess who's back with vengeance as one of the most powerful supports of patch 7.34b? It's Vengeful Spirit! The chicken lady who used to be one of the weakest supports is seeing a return into the spotlight after going ignored for the longest time. With her overall win rate jumping by a whopping six percent since pre 7.34, one can only wonder what changed. Allow us to explain why you should not sleep on support Vengeful Spirit in patch 7.34b.

As you can see from the Dotabuff chart above, Vengeful Spirit had a sharp increase on her win and pick rate since patch 7.34 dropped. Between July to August 24, her pick rate rose from around five percent to 10 percent. Meanwhile, her win rate jumped to 53 percent from 47 percent. Sure, those numbers were based on Vengeful Spirit as a whole, and not a support specifically. However, this did not discount the fact that there was something going on with this hero. So what exactly happened?

In patch 7.34, Vengeful Spirit received a major upgrade to her skill, Wave of Terror. It now reduces enemy's total attack damage by up to 30 percent. Not base attack, but TOTAL. Take Legion Commander who has a total of 300 attack from items and duel victories for example. One wave of terror and all of a sudden her damage drops to 210. This makes support Vengeful Spirit an incredible anti-carry hero.

She still retains her armor reduction debuff which goes up to negative 10 with her level 15 talent. Furthermore, all effects last for eight seconds. That's a long time! Of course, you can counter this by buying Black King Bar. Nonetheless, carries will have a hell of a time especially during laning stage. By the way, in 7.34b, her Magic Missile had an increase in stun duration from 1.4 to 1.7 seconds.

Solar Crest is an increasingly popular item for supports in 7.34b and is the perfect item for Vengeful Spirit. As a universal hero, Vengeful Spirit craves Solar Crest because the item now provides stats by requiring a Crown in the recipe. The item's active ability, Shine, provides excellent enhancement to allies or debilitation to enemies.

Casting to allies:

Casting to enemies:

Apart from Solar Crest, Aghanim's Shard is another important item to acquire the double Magic Missile stuns. If lucky, you can get it from the Tormentor instead of purchasing it to save your gold for other items. Other than that, Boots of Bearing and Aghanim's Scepter are two big items that most support Vengeful Spirit should go for.

According to reports from Spectral, Vengeful Spirit is the third most picked hero in The International 2023 (TI12) Regional Qualifiers thus far. The unimpressive 47.22% win rate includes matches of all positions or roles. However, when broken down to each specific role, the numbers are as follows:

It is evident that Vengeful Spirit performs best as a safelane support. Of the Regional Qualifiers that have concluded (North America and China), Nouns Esports and Xtreme Gaming were the teams that utilized safalene support Vengeful Spirit the most. The two teams drafted the hero four times and won three of them.

There are a number of support heroes other than Vengeful Spirit that are seeing an increase in performance in 7.34b. Grimstroke, Earthshaker and Clockwerk are some of the most successful support heroes at the TI12 Regional Qualifiers. Dawnbreaker and Treant are also returning to their prime as support heroes as well.

We will update you with more hero highlights as they come so be sure to stay tuned to esports.gg for more Dota 2 news and updates.