Dota 2 New Hero – Marci Looks Broken

You know a hero is good when it’s picked a lot and has a 50%+ win rate from day 1, even though the players have not yet had the chance to master it. In Marci’s case, the win rate is almost 52.5%, which is very high. And it’s enough to take a quick look at her abilities to know why she’s so successful.

Marci’s Toolkit

Marci is a strength-based hero with a total attribute increase of 7.6 per level: 3.3 strength, 2.4 agility, and 1.9 intelligence. The base health regen is minimal (0.25) and the base mana regen is 0. However, one of Marci’s important advantages is the movement speed: 310.

Now let’s take a look at her abilities.

Dispose

Dispose allows you to throw an enemy 350 units back, damage it for up to 250 HP and stun it for up to 2.1 seconds (2.85s with the level 15 talent). This ability makes Marci a great offlaner. Or you could play her as position 1 carry, but then you’d have to ask yourself what the hell is wrong with IceFrog. Because the throw makes no sense on a carry.

Think about it: to throw an enemy hero, you need to initiate most of the time. And that involves putting yourself in harm’s way. Although, you could think of Dispose as an escape mechanism as well. Just throw your enemy back and run away while they are stunned.

Rebound

Rebound is an amazing mobility tool. It allows you to jump to a target located at least 450 unites away and at most 800 (1000 with the level 15 talent), and then spring away from it. That’s a travel distance of 1600 units if you do this at max range. And apart from this amazing mobility mechanism, which is practically a Blink Dagger, you also deal up to 300 AoE damage (325 radius) and slow enemies for up to 60% for 3 seconds, while your ally movement speed gets boosted for 5 seconds by 35%. The fact that you can do this every 9 seconds at level 4 is absolutely insane. Combined with Dispose, this clearly makes Marci a great offlaner.

Sidekick

Sidekick is another ability that suggests the offlaner role for Marci. It gives you and an ally up to 50% life steal and up to 65 bonus damage for 6 seconds. And you can cast it every 12 seconds. At level 20, you have a talent that gives this ability 1.5s spell immunity on top of the first 2 buffs, which is insane. Imagine putting this buff on a Templar Assassin or a Sven that has already been buffed by an Ogre Magi, as well as himself. Good luck killing that guy.

Unleash

Unleash is the one ability that gives Marci a way to become a carry if you really want to play her in this role. For 16 seconds, the hero gains ultra high attack speed bonus (700/975/1325) for its Fury strikes (3/4/5). The hero alternates between these strikes and a 1.5s break, during which she cannot attack. There are all kinds of other buffs and debuffs that go with this ability: Pulse damage (up to 200), pulse movement slow (30%), pulse attack slow (up to 100), and a movement speed bonus (15%). These pulses affect the attacked enemy.

 

Photo credit: Valve