Damage
59-65
108-114
143-149
Movement Speed Amp
0.7%
1.8%
2.5%
Pudge, the Butcher[edit]
In the Fields of Endless Carnage, far to the south of Quoidge, a corpulent figure works tirelessly through the night—dismembering, disembowelling, piling up the limbs and viscera of the fallen that the battlefield might be clear by dawn. In this cursed realm, nothing can decay or decompose; no corpse may ever return to the earth from which it sprang, no matter how deep you dig the grave. Flocked by carrion birds who need him to cut their meals into beak-sized chunks, Pudge the Butcher hones his skills with blades that grow sharper the longer he uses them. Swish, swish, thunk. Flesh falls from the bone; tendons and ligaments part like wet paper. And while he always had a taste for the butchery, over the ages, Pudge has developed a taste for its byproduct as well. Starting with a gobbet of muscle here, a sip of blood there... before long he was thrusting his jaws deep into the toughest of torsos, like a dog gnawing at rags. Even those who are beyond fearing the Reaper, fear the Butcher.
Abilities[edit]
Meat Hook
Launches a bloody hook at a unit or location. The hook will snag the first unit it encounters, dragging the unit back to Pudge and dealing damage and a mini-stun if it is an enemy.
| Distance/Cast Range: | 1000/1100/1200/1300 |
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The Butcher's hook is a symbolic nightmare, its curved blade a frightening reminder of his slaughterous intent.
Notes
- Meat Hook only grabs units when it is being extended. If the hook touches a unit while retracting, it has no effect.
- Provides 500 flying vision on hit, lasting at the hit location for 4 seconds.
- Meat Hook can pull Runes back to Pudge. Mana cost is refunded if successful.
- Disable blocked by Spell Immunity, the damage and pull are not.
Rot
A toxic cloud that deals intense damage and slows movement. It harms enemy units and Pudge himself.
| Damage Per Second: | 30/60/90/120 (65/95/125/155 ) |
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| Movement Speed Slow: | 11%/18%/25%/32% |
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A foul odor precedes a toxic, choking gas, emanating from the Butcher's putrid, ever-swelling mass.
Notes
- Pudge can deny himself with this ability.
- Damage is dealt every 0.2 seconds in smaller instances of:
- 6 / 12 / 18 / 24
- 13 / 19 / 25 / 31
- Blocked by Spell Immunity.
Flesh Heap
Gives Pudge bonus
magic resistance, as well as bonus strength that increases each time Pudge kills an enemy Hero or it dies in his vicinity. Flesh Heap is retroactive and will gain charges before it is skilled, which will become active once the ability is finally skilled.
| Bonus Magic Resistance: | 6%/8%/10%/12% |
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| Strength Bonus Per Kill: | 1/1.5/2/2.5 (4.5 ) |
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| Stack Gain Radius: | 450
1600 if Pudge gets the kill |
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The Butcher gives new meaning to the words ‘meat shield.’
Notes
- Total magic resistance:
- 29.5% / 31% / 32.5% / 34%
- Illusions also gain the magic resistance from this ability.
- Pudge does not gain stacks from denies.
Dismember
Pudge chows down on an enemy unit, disabling it, pulling it closer to himself and dealing damage over time, and healing himself by the damage done.
| Damage Per Second: | 60/90/120 |
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| Bonus Strength DPS: | 30%/45%/60% |
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‘When I'm through with these vermin, they'll be fit for a pie!’
Notes
- Total damage:
- 180 / 270 / 360 + 90% / 135% / 180% of Pudge's strength
- 720 + 360% of Pudge's strength
- Heals Pudge for the full amount regardless of actual damage dealt.
- Pulls the target closer to Pudge.
- Dismember can be heard globally, alerting all players.
- Damage blocked by Spell Immunity, the stun is not.
- Blocked by Linken's Sphere.
Talent Tree[edit]
Recommended Items[edit]
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General Strategy[edit]
Each carefully aimed throw of Pudge's signature hook strikes fear into his foes. Pulling his enemies near to carve them with his cleavers, he gains additional health and damage with every kill, and soon becomes an unstoppable killer.
Pudge (In-Game Description)
Overview
Pudge is an excellent ganker and disabler.
Skill Build
| Level | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
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| Level | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 18 | 20 | 25 | |
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In a standard Pudge game, a first point in Rot is usually taken to bolster your last hitting capability. Meat Hook is then maxed, with Rot treated secondary.
Flesh Heap is maxed after Hook & Rot, since your goal is to increase your ganking capability and damage so this skill is put on hold. If you're struggling and need some defense, 1 point instead of level 3 or 4 Rot will give you the benefit of all the Strength you have accrued through kills/assists.
Early Game
Position yourself as best as possible for successful hooks. While Pudge's hook is going to require a fair bit of skill to get right, the first step in improving your hook is to minimize the angle between their possible paths and your hook. This will make it much easier to land a successful hook on an opponent. But that's not all there is to hooks. When possible, do your absolute best to pull them over into a position where they cannot run away easily, such as awkward terrain. As an example in the mid-lane, pulling an enemy across the river to your side will let you get a good amount of damage in before they can flee, eating through their regeneration and bottle charges.
An important detail to successful hooks is vision. By nighttime majority of heroes sight range is reduced to 800 on average with some exceptions (Enchantress, Night Stalker, and Bounty Hunter). This means you should always be concealed from vision or attempting to be when you gank (daytime or nighttime). Hook level 4 extends to 1300, you have a 500 range jump on majority of heroes in the dark. This is a hallmark between an average Pudge, and an exceptional one. On that note - Smoke of Deceit is your best friend. You can slip past the normal Rune Ward locations to easily rotate ganks on bottom and top lanes, or even feign ganking, and then taking out the middle hero.
The movement speed debuff only applies to enemy targets. You should in particular toggle this before you've hooked an enemy onto a place where they cannot flee quickly, to land a few more strikes and perhaps even a final hook. If you're facing certain death, you can also use this in combination with juking, such that you might deny yourself and leave them nothing from the kill.
As an interesting side effect, remember that Rot deals magic damage, while Flesh Heap increases your resistance to it. This means you take a lot less damage from it as the game goes on and you gain stacks of Flesh Heap. You should also not be taking damage from Rot while under magic immunity! While under magic-immunity effects, always have Rot on.
Mid Game
A few things need to be covered on the use of this ability. Firstly, when engaging an enemy, always use Rot before this. There is a short delay after starting Dismember where you cannot activate Rot, which means you have a delay in dealing additional damage. To maximize the damage you deal, you must use Rot before. Do not worry if they try to run a little, as Rot will slow them enough to catch up, and as long as your Dismember lands on them they're within range of Rot, too. The usual Hook, Rot, Dismember combo is extremely effective.
In team fights, Dismember gets trickier. A rough priority list of who you should target would be roughly this:
- If several opponents can easily disable your ultimate immediately, don't use it. You're almost certainly better off straight up attacking and using your hook.
- When there is a hero with a reliable stun they should be eliminated from the enemy team. Even if you don't kill them, disabling them means they can't help their allies either. Chaos Knight, Sven and such heroes are good examples.
- If you are safe from being disabled (ie a Black King Bar activated) and you're facing a powerful carry, disabling said carry is critical. Examples include Anti-Mage (especially as he can eat your mana), Faceless Void, Phantom Assassin, etc.
As a final note, you should almost always have a Black King Bar before you get a Scepter, if you're aiming for it. In team fights the ability will very easily be interrupted by a number of heroes. Black King Bar makes you invulnerable to this problem, and has the additional benefit of making you immune to your own Rot damage.
Late Game
Pudge has two major concerns: Mana and mobility. You need to be able to cast your abilities, and another big bonus is keeping your opponent within range of your Rot as much as possible. (Though Rot's slow is going to help with this a lot.) Try to always at minimum have enough mana to stay in the fight, and the movement speed to maximize the Rot exposure.
Beyond these two, he is a hero with a very good strength gain. Not so much from levels and items, but from Flesh Heap granting a fairly hefty bonus. For this reason, the attraction of stacking strength to increase your damage and survivability is going to go down the more ganks, kills and assists you've netted. Because of the same ability as before magic resistance is also not very attractive. With more sources of magic resistance, each source's gains are strongly reduced. For this reason, a Pipe of Insight is going to be far more powerful, as it gives a flat magic damage resistance, not another % multiplier.
In other words:
- Don't stack additional % magic resistance past Flesh Heap, as more sources of % magic resistance lowers the gain from each.
- Only stack health if you're low on it; a fair Pudge game will not have this issue as Flesh Heap stacks up.
- Work on mana and mobility before damage to maximize damage from Hook, Dismember and Rot. You will gain damage from Flesh Heap's strength bonus.
Version History[edit]
| Version
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Balance Changes
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| 7.14
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 Base damage increased by 7
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 Rot slow reduced from 17/22/27/32% to 11/18/25/32%
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| 7.13b
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- Base movement speed reduced from 280 to 275
- Base armor reduced from -1 to -2
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| 7.10
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- Rot slow reduced from 20/24/28/32% to 17/22/27/32%
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| 7.08
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- Rot slow rescaled from 30% to 20/24/28/32%
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| 7.07d
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- Meat Hook mana cost increased from 110/120/130/140 to 140
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| 7.07
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- Meat Hook can pull Runes back to you (Mana cost is refunded if successful)
- Dismember now pulls the target closer to Pudge
-
 Reworked Talent Tree
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| 7.06
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- Replaced Respawn Talent: +1s Dismember Duration (Level 20)
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| 7.03
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- Meat Hook speed reduced from 1600 to 1450
- Meat Hook no longer pulls invulnerable heroes
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| 7.02
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- Movement Speed reduced from 285 to 280
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 Fixed Meat Hook sometimes landing the target behind your hero (requiring you to sometimes turn to dismember)
- Level 20 Talent from -35s Respawn Time to -40s
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| 7.00
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 Added Talent Tree
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| 6.88b
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- Dismember strength based damage increased from 30/40/50% to 30/45/60%
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| 6.88
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- Rot slow increased from 27% to 30%
- Dismember cooldown reduced from 30 to 30/25/20
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| 6.86b
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- Meat Hook Scepter damage reduced from 175/275/375/475 to 180/270/360/450
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| 6.86
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- Reworked Scepter on Pudge
- Dismember damage from 75/125/175 to 60/90/120 +30/40/50% of strength
- Dismember now heals you for the damage it does
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| 6.85
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- Rot damage rescaled from 35/60/85/110 to 30/60/90/120
- Rot move slow increased from 20/22/24/26% to 27%
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| 6.84
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- Rot move slow from 20% to 20/22/24/26%
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| 6.83
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- Meat Hook range increased from 700/900/1100/1300 to 1000/1100/1200/1300
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| 6.82
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- Turn Rate improved from 0.5 to 0.7
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| 6.79
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- Can now use Blink Dagger
- If you hook a unit onto an unpathable ledge, the unit gains free pathing for 5 seconds
- Flesh Heap magic resistance reduced from 4/8/12/16% to 6/8/10/12%
- Dismember Scepter strength multiplier increased from 0.75 to 1
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| 6.78
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- Flesh Heap strength bonus increased from 0.9/1.2/1.5/1.8 to 1/1.5/2/2.5
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| 6.72
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- Rot damage increased from 25/50/75/100 to 35/60/85/110
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| 6.68
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- Flesh Heap is now retroactive
- Reduced Flesh Heap AoE from 525 to 450
- Meat Hook damage type changed from physical to pure
- Meat Hook damage adjusted from 100/200/300/400 to 90/180/270/360
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| 6.67
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- Flesh Heap death AoE increased from 400 to 525
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| 6.65
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- Meat Hook scaling rebalanced
- Cast range from 400/600/800/1000 to 550/700/850/1000
- Cooldown from 14 to 14/13/12/11
- Mana cost from 140 to 110/120/130/140
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| 6.64
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- Flesh Heap reworked:
- It no longer gains strength from creeps
- Instead he gains strength (same values as before, 0.9/1.2/1.5/1.8) for any nearby (400 AoE) dying enemy hero
- You still get the bonus if the unit dies outside of the AoE if you are the killer
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| 6.60
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- Added Butcher to Aghanim's Scepter
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| 6.58
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- Flesh Heap bonus strength gained from heroes is improved from 0.3/0.6/0.9/1.2 to 0.9/1.2/1.5/1.8
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| 6.52
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- Flesh Heap now works with denies
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Notable Players[edit]
See also[edit]
External links[edit]
References[edit]
Disabler 
Initiator 
Durable 
Nuker
Upgradeable by Aghanim's Scepter. Increases the damage and decreases the cooldown.
