Ogre Magi is all about pushing your luck, trying to eke out that little bit of extra damage, and saying ‘screw it’ and pushing even further even though you know it might not be the best idea. Because sometimes the stars align, the dice roll in your favour and it is the best idea. The best idea possible. And everyone dies while your dual heads laugh in an eerie, uncomfortable double octave.
While all three of Ogre Magi’s abilities are useful in their own way, and perfectly acceptable nukes and slows and buffs, it’s only with the addition of Multicast, his level six ultimate, that the whole thing starts to shift into proper view. Your Q, Fireblast, turns from a cheap damager with a reasonable stun and a long cooldown into something that’s off cooldown quickly but costs a hell of a lot to fire. Your W, Ignite, turns from a crap DoT into an AoE DoT, and suddenly it’s softening up enemy teams before you move in. Your E, Blood Lust, which, while perfectly acceptable at increasing a single target’s movement and attack speed by 15% and 50% respectively, becomes something that can buff your whole team, if you’re smart and lucky.
And that’s what Ogre Magi’s all about. Being smart and lucky. Multicast comes with the added bonus of being able to do what it says on the tin and cast any of your abilities multiple times. Fireblast can almost destroy any hero if you get it to fire three times, and Bloodlust can turn a team of DPS heroes into a complete nightmare, sprinting around and destroying everything with pure attack damage. With the right team composition, he can be beyond devastating.
There’s also the great fact that he’s got a huge amount of scaling strength, which means he’s almost always keeping up with your toughest heroes, and it’s not surprising to see him at over 2k health before you’ve even hit the half an hour mark. The only price of this is that he’s shackled to dealing attack damage from melee, rather than range, which can make last hitting in the early game a risk.
The way you’re supposed to approach Ogre Magi is highlighted with his Sceptre upgrade, which does nothing except add Unrefined Fireblast to your roster of abilities. The first time you look at it you think it looks terrible, coming in at 400 mana and doing exactly the same damage and stun as Fireblast, but once you’re playing the game you realise that it’s a reroll. You let off Fireblast and it does a paltry single hit, and suddenly you’re presented with a choice.
Do you leave that as it is, or do you go for gold, drain your mana pool and have another roll of the dice? Because if you’ve already hit them once, another three hits with a Multicasted Unrefined Fireblast is going to finish them off for sure. You can even throw an Ignite in there for good measure, and Blood Lust can always let you run away, right?
But what if it only does a single hit? You’ll be out of mana, out of cooldown and left pretty much powerless. It’s eating away at that gambling urge at the back of your spine, and you’ve got to decide whether to give in to it or not.
That’s Ogre Magi in a nutshell. He’s a hero of chance, for those who like to gamble a little when they play Dota. With a lot of clever placement, and tilting the odds in your favour, he can completely devastate, but if things don’t swing your way, he can be worse than useless. Which make him a lot of fun, if you’re the gambling sort. And deep down, we’re all the gambling sort.