How do you counter Abathur?

General Discussion
49
  1. Push that early game advantage. Every second they get to 10 without incuring damage to structures is basically winning for an abathur comp.
  2. Punishing hard. Early deaths means less defense for structures. A death with abathur is basically 1.25 deaths.
  3. Globals globals globals. Being everywhere abathur wants to be makes sure he can’t soak easily.
  4. Freezing lanes while targeting down sym. Abby wants lategame, impede that.
54

Durance of Hate may have a lower cooldown, but the damage is also only about 2/3rd of Consume Souls and it’s a skillshot with an obvious windup and fairly slow travel time.

If people are getting repeatedly caught by it without prior setup, they probably aren’t that skilled. It’s noticably easier to evade than Chromie’s Sand Blast.

But your arguments against the Consume Souls/Spell Power build when up against low HP enemies are what I’d expect from someone who hasn’t actually tried playing Mephisto themselves.

55

u shouldnt use durance as a random chromies skill shot
u use it as follow up or when ur 100% sure they are going there
i hit more than 90% of my durances
its not about dmg its about mass cc and when they are cced u can deal dmg :slight_smile:
but if ur low rank player consume souls can be good because u cant miss it… thats true

56

Yea I also saw several games last year where Vikings were solo top lane on Dragon Shire and did great.

Those are outliers. In general, the way that map plays out doesn’t fit the strengths of either hero.

57

I disagree, for DS specifically I consider Abathur first-ban material if we aren’t playing him. Hat on the sololaner is an enormous advantage for top, and often times Abathur can catch the wave while the solo can just focus on trading and holding. I’ll concede it’s not as broken as before the aba rework when you could run him in the healer slot, but it’s still really good. If you can get top bruiser camp before shrines activate you easily pressure top wall or fort without a rotation, and then there’s a lot of hat/mines value once rotations start.

I personally get hyped about vikings on DS, probably just a lot harder to play vikings top than afk behind a gate pressing QWE while you eat or something. In a way it does suit both their strengths because of the paused nature of the objective, even vikings top demands the enemy solo laner to doublesoak while attempting to hold, else run a 3v4 bot while you have two heroes covering top/mid which is how you see those zarya+vikings comps walk to bot keep in a straight line almost uncontested with the objective going on for like 13+ minutes.

58

Abathur can no longer sit far away from lanes. His locusts don’t do anything if your body is too far because they die before getting to the minions.

So if he wants to still get xp while he hats someone during the objective, he has to go in the lane. Any hero with a global can punish that. KTZ can as well. Or you can go to the lane and hunt him down.

59

Stealth heroes are good for this too because they can’t be seen on the mini map, although Abathur can prep for this with Toxic Nest placement.

60

Ah the classic team not realizing they’re outnumbered.