First off, my guide may be a little rougher than those of HuckleCat and Fallout. Frankly they have a lot more DotA under their belts than me at this point but I think this should steer you in the right direction.
The Devourer is a tough hero to play right. Let’s quickly go over what he is. The Devourer is straight up, point for point, Pudge from DotA. He will be welcome in the ranks of familiar heroes to the DotA fans. Devourer is a Strength hero with two very strong active abilities, a strong passive that synergizes well, and a strong ultimate on a short timer.
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Abilities
Guttling Hook. The Devourer launches a hook at the enemy. The first unit it hits, enemy or ally, will be dragged back to the Devourer.
Target position: All non-siege units
Type: Physical Push
Range: 400/600/800/1000
Radius: 96
Deals: 100/200/300/400 Damage
Mana cost: 140
Cooldown: 14 seconds
As you can see this is a very high-damage ability. This move can also be incredibly frustrating because friendly units always seem to get in the way at the last second and you grab the wrong thing. Either that or you grab a creep off the pack. Or, you just flat out miss entirely. A general good tip is that you almost never want to actually target the enemy hero in question with this move. Try to predict where they'll be. Target the ground instead. You don't have to click on a hero with this move. **IMPORTANT** This ability WILL drag units over ledges and cliffs and whatnot. This is why it is SO key. You can totally isolate an enemy hero with a good hook if you're up on a ledge above and they thought they were safe with a giant herd of creeps. Heh. Noobs.
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Decay. The Devourer allows himself to decay, draining hit points over time and releasing poisonous gases that both damage and slow nearby enemy units.
Toggle (this can be turned on and off at any time. No cooldown)
Radius: 250
Deals: 25/50/75/100 magic damage per second to self
Mana cost: NONE. This ability eats your HP pool instead.
Effects: 25/50/75/100 magic damage per second +20% movement speed reduction
Ahh, decay. This goes hand in hand with hook. Turn this on before you hook and suddenly you've hooked an enemy into your slowing rotting mass and they're frantically trying to escape but they're snared and OH THE STINKY PAIN GET IT OFF ME! Please be aware you can kill yourself with this move. This has tactical implications. If you're super low on HP and you know you can't get away you may want to decay yourself to death and deny enemy heroes experience and gold. Don't, however, leave it on and forget and continually kill yourself for no reason. That's dumb and you're trying to avoid being dumb; that's why you're reading this right? It is because of this skill and the fact that it kills you that you need a high HP pool on your Devourer.
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Cadaver Armor. Increases Devourer's magic armor and permanently adds 0.9/1.2/1.5/1.8 strength for each hero kill and 0.03/0.06/0.09/0.12 strength for each creep kill he makes.
Passive bonus: +1/2/3/4 Magic Armor
Ability sounds a little underwhelming but is actually pretty clutch. Every time you kill a hero, you get more strength. Permanently. This adds to your already substantial HP pool, regeneration, and autoattack damage. The Devourer isn't much of a farming hero early on, so he won't have many creep kills. That's why we get this ability last.
Now, for the good part, the magic armor you get reduces all damaging skills on the Devourer. This includes your own Decay. That's right, putting points in Cadaver Armor actively reduces the damage your own Decay does to you, making it less of a penalty or hindrance. More on this later.
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Devour (Ultimate) MMMMMMMMMM NUM NUM! The Devourer grabs an enemy unit and feasts on their flesh, dealing massive damage for every second he feeds.
Target: Enemy Units
Type: Magic
Range: 160
Channeling Time: 3.3 seconds.
Mana Cost: 100/130/170
Cooldown: **30 SECONDS** <-- next to nothing. This rules.
Damage: 75/125/175 magic damage per second
Tricky to use correctly, but absolutely devastating. This actually incapacitates the enemy hero. They can do nothing while you're eating them. Likewise, you're channeling a spell so you can't do anything either. **IMPORTANT NOTE TO DOTA PUDGE PLAYERS** Currently, and I don't know if this is a bug or not, you cannot turn on Decay while Devouring. It will break the channeling. Make sure to have Decay on beforehand.
Ok, so this is obviously a nice skill to have just for the disable and damage. However when you combine it with Hook and Decay it's pretty much a guaranteed kill mid game. Set up the combo as follows:
After spotting a likely enemy hero, prepare for the kill by turning on Decay. Quickly Hook them over and mash Devour as soon as possible. You want to make sure you Devour them within Decay range. If done right, you'll have caused significant Hook damage to start, then Decay and Devour both throw out MASSIVE damage over time that just shrivels their rapidly diminishing HP pool. If they survive the Devour, they panic and try to run away but unfortunately they're snared 20% movespeed from your Decay. Keep chasing if need be and Hook again as needed. Needless to say this is extraordinarily frustrating to the enemy, and if you get this down to a fine art you may hear things like, "****ING NOOB ASS HACKER WTF KILL ME 1 SHOT FROM FULL HEALTH **** YOU" followed by *angry noob has left the game*.
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Item Build
Starting items:
Bottle
Marchers
Trinket of Restoration x2
The Devourer has almost no mana to start. He barely has enough for one measly hook. The bottle gives you some sorely needed mana restoration and some HP regen as well. Make sure to check runes every two minutes. This is why it's a good idea for the Devourer to be in the center lane so he can check both rune spawns easier. Boots are pretty self explanatory. The two trinkets I suggest getting third. They'll be good for his HP regen and you will make use of them later for a different item.
Mid game items:
Shaman's Headdress
*THIS IS HUGE THIS IS HUGE THIS IS HUGE* The Shaman's Headdress drastically reduces magic damage taken by you and also has very nice HP regeneration. This item was made for the Devourer. This further reduces the effect of Decay on you. When stacking with Cadaver Armor you're looking at 50% magic damage reduction. This means the Decay that is doing 100 damage per second to enemies is doing 50 damage per second to you. Woo!
Late Game items:
Behemoth's Heart
Post Haste
Sacrificial Stone
The Behemoth's Heart is massive HP and good regen, staples for your fledgling Devourer. Pretty much a no-brainer.
Post Haste are the upgraded speed boots with teleport. Even if you have an enemy slowed 20% in your Decay that's no good if you move at the speed of a beached whale.
The Sacrificial Stone is optional really. It gives a solid HP/Mana upgrade as well as regen. It's more for the games where you're pretty sure you can get some good hero kills in and build up a few charges. Once you get several charges up on that thing you're very, very hard to bring down.
Do not worry about stacking damage items on your Devourer. His melee damage is inconsequential. Your job is to have so much HP and regen than you can keep Decay on basically full time. Because of that, no one wants to get near you. Your teammates can worry about destroying the enemy, you are just a giant warning. When you and your teammates are pushing a lane, enemy heroes are very reluctant to go in against a Devourer and his allies. They don't want to be stuck in a slowing cloud and have you disable them with your ult while your allies rip them to shreds. The Devourer is a **solid** late game hero. At the start and most of the mid you basically are fodder. Play defensively. Wait and get those items.
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Skill Build Order
1 Hook
2 Decay
3 Hook
4 Decay
5 Hook
6 Devour (Ultimate)
7 Hook
8 Decay
9 Decay
10 Cadaver Armor
11 Devour
12 Cadaver Armor
13 Cadaver Armor
14 Cadaver Armor
15 Stats
16 Devour
17-25 Stats
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Notes:
You are fragile and don't do much early on. When you finally have max range on your hook you can start being interesting. The best way to utilize the Devourer is the element of surprise. Hide out of line of sight of the enemy and wait for a good hook opportunity. When possible, try to hook them into an area that favors you. For example the river banks in the middle lane are great hook areas. Drag a hero out of the river and up on your side of the river bank and it gives you a solid opportunity to kill them.
Have another buddy with you at the time to help out if needed. It's kind of like a bully grabbing a little wimpy kid into an ally and beating the **** out of him.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON DEVOUR: It is imperative, if you're doing the decay/hook/devour combo that you get the devour off quickly. The range on Devour does say 160, and the range on decay does say 250. It's all a lie. More often than not you will press devour and the enemy hero has started to wander away. You will catch them with the devour but they'll be out of range of your decay so you're taking extra damage for no reason. This is not something you can really teach, you just have to practice it and know how it works. This can be very frustrating for Devourer players. A tip on this is try to hook someone up when you're on the edge of a wall, like a river bank or a ledge. People's natural instinct when hooked is to run as far away from you as fast as possible. However if you cut off that direct route they'll be forced to take a side route and be disoriented. Plus, you can pretty much guess where they'll be going.
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