Brood is probably the most dominant laner in the game if your opponents don’t have direct counters. Even if they do, a late Brood pick could force them to make awkward lane swaps just to survive the laning stage. This makes Brood (if you have no shame) one of the best heroes to spam in order to gain MMR.

Brood, however, is not just a pub stomper – she is probably the scariest last pick in pro games as well. Without proper counters, the spider momma can win the game almost by herself even against the best players in the world, which says a lot about the potential of the hero.

Broodmother is a very solo-orientated hero, she almost never interacts with the team for the first 15 minutes. She can work in almost any lineup as long as she has a good early game, but is best in lineups that can play 4v5 on the other side of the map while she takes buildings.

It’s not very well known, but after Alchemist/Meepo she’s the next fastest farmer in the game because of her spiders and free pathing, allowing her to clear lanes and jungles in absolutely no time. While an Antimage requires lots of levels, Treads, and Battlefury to wipe one side of the jungle, she only needs a couple of levels and a Soul Ring to wipe the whole jungle, and a lane. But unlike Alchemist or Antimage, she can actually make space while doing this rather than taking it. So, if you need a 2^nd carry on your team without hurting your main carry, this is a go-to hero.

Mid is a very short lane which allows her to initiate a tower push very quickly. Also, she’s very hard to gank here. The length of the mid lane lets her farm between the lane and the enemy jungle/ancients very quickly so she can rack up gold like there’s no tomorrow.

Brood is a solo laner, she can’t be paired with anything in the laning stage, as she needs solo EXP and this is the go-to lane if you want to create chaos. A good Brood would solo a 3lane and then invade their jungle which eats up their resources while boosting hers.

Good friends to have are:

Strong Against:

Weak Against:

This is the go-to build in almost every game: you need Soul Ring for mana sustain. Medallion makes your Spider army extremely dangerous in the early game. Diffusal increases your kill potential even more - not only with the DPS it gives, but also with the lockdown. The active helps you and your spider army stick to your victim.

You usually want to finish PTs afterward - you are fast enough in your web and you wouldn't be moving around the map too much in the lane. A faster Diffusal is more valuable because of the kill potential it gives.

BKB is mandatory - you need it before team fights start, or enemies will make it a priority to burst you down in in every engagement, which is an easy way to lose your momentum.

In the late game, your options are open. Nonetheless, the standard offensive combo of Bloodthorn + Nullifier will increase your kill potential the most.

Getting Orchid early on is a good idea if the enemy team has elusive cores (Storm, QoP, Weaver, etc.), who you want to pressure from early on. The mana regen boost is useful for spamming your nuke more often.

Brood starts off weak at level 1, she can only last hit or trade with the enemy, once she gets level 3 she can now start building up her spider army, this army can wipe a creep wave with no problem. At level 4 you have the choice between extending your Webs deeper into the enemy territory (their tower) or pulling it back towards your side so you can farm the jungle, depending on if you can kill your opponent or not. If it’s possible to go for a kill then it’s always better to bully your opponent out of lane and then start eating up their jungle, rather than your own. Make sure to always be expanding your spider army by having them attack the creeps before you last hit or last hit with the spiders themselves. But remember that only Spiderlings can create Spiderites, Spiderites have no reproductive capabilities.

You can use your Web’s free pathing while farming jungle camps:

You need to position your hero on top of the trees/cliff in order to allow only 1 or 2 of the neutrals to hit you. This will decrease the damage you are taking while farming jungle camps and will allow you to get back to the lane without being low on HP.

Brood’s spiders are an amazing zoning tool, most of the time the lane will be over before 5 minutes, good Broods will kick you out of lane and take your tower as soon as possible, this aggressive gameplay will force rotations, either forcing your opponent to leave the lane or their teammates to come help them. Keeping this in mind you should decide onto trying to kill them or just simply cutting waves behind them and eating their jungle while they tank your wave under tower, then periodically you can send your spiders to kill them once you build up a big enough army. In the early levels as an offlane Brood you preferably want to harass out the supports out of lane first, then get the carries, as the supports already will have low net worth because they have to buy wards/courier and pool tangoes to their mid laner. This allows you to get a level advantage which makes killing their carry much easier.

Not feeding yourself nor the spiders is the most important part of a Brood’s gameplay. If you’re against a weak lane without AOE, then you most likely won’t have to worry about this, but against strong lanes, it is always recommended to simply just avoid fighting them while you farm the jungle and get your mid game items. Good farming patterns & survival skills can allow you to get a very early orchid and transition the worst lanes into free farm. Your webs should be always positioned in such a way that your opponents can’t initiate onto you, but rather only you onto them, they should always be going around trees and unpathable terrain. If your lane gets hairy and you can’t stay there simply go to your jungle or cut waves and eat up the enemy jungle, as Brood can jungle quite efficiently as early as level 3-4.

Brood has a very high kill potential but requires proper execution. Brood usually dives towers a lot, so just try not to switch the tower aggro onto yourself and end up killing yourself. You can do the right click outside of the tower aggro range and this will disable agro for a couple of seconds, just enough for you to get 1-2 hits off with your hero. Make sure to always prepare a big enough spider army before going in, and watch the map out for potential counter ganks - people don’t like Broodmothers to destroy their lanes. 

Method 1#

Creating a big enough army and just sending it at your opponent is the main way a Brood would kill, this works against weak supports or heroes without strong AOE

Method 2# Split army

This one requires having a Spiderling and Spiderite control group, as Spiderlings have more HP and 50% magical resistance they’ll be able to take at least one nuke. You should hide your Spiderites behind trees while sending Spiderlings to bait the nuke then attack with the Spiderites afterward. Your hero can join in as well.

Not every hero can be killed: in these scenarios, you can simply just go jungle and get your midgame items.

Before the horn rings Brood starts off by running out and placing a web on the mid lane and then goes back to block creeps. This is a common play as it allows web charges to regenerate earlier and your mana to be full when you want to start spawning Spiderlings later on.

He's playing mid against Ori's SS, but this should be an easy matchup for Brood if played properly, as Storm Spirit is a ranged hero, meaning he does not buy stout shield which makes him easier to kill once Brood has a big enough army.

Brood starts the first 3 minutes off by playing passively, just last-hitting and racking up her spider army so she can go for a kill attempt later on. She makes sure that she doesn't feed Spiderlings to Storm unnecessarily as that could turn the tables on her.

Storm Spirit's Remnant has a 1-second activation delay, so Brood is able to bait some Remnants out and with good micro and a large enough spider army ends up getting an easy kill on Storm at 3.5 minutes into the game. Since the kill attempt left her on low HP/mana she goes back to racking up a spider army.

At 5 minutes she has a large enough army to do decent damage to the t1 mid tower with the catapult wave. If possible a Brood should always use this timing as catapults do 250% damage to towers. This forces a rotation from Rubick, but luckily her support Leshrac wraps around the tower and nets an easy kill for them.

Since Storm left the lane, this allows Brood to do decent damage to the tower. Storm later reacts to that and comes back to lane, but since Brood is a good farmer she can take that downtime to clear Ancient camps while Storm pushes the wave towards her. Due to her fast farming speed, she misses almost no farm in the lane during the downtime while getting the Ancient camp.

She, later on, finishes the tower and starts spreading out her network of webs. Now she will be focusing on more farm so she can get an early Orchid, which will allow her to snowball out of control in the midgame.

Brood’s play style is usually, all the same, up till BKB/Roshan, as she’s going to be split-pushing and killing people who come to her lane if she can. Her play style changes drastically after BKB as she can now start taking 5v5 fights. Usually, fights should be located in the lane where your webs are. Otherwise, unless you have to defend HG or you have lots of webs, it’s most likely recommended to use that timing to break the enemy HG with your BKB and force some rotation.

So what to do when you’re behind as a Brood? Simple, same as if you were ahead, keep farming and split-pushing. Brood’s comeback potential really depends on her lane.

If you fed the enemy free spiders and they’re knocking at your HG at 20 minutes, there’s not much comeback potential.

But if your team simply couldn’t play 4v5 well enough while you were farming, when a Brood finishes her items she becomes a powerhouse and can turn games in absolutely no time. Not only that, it is also VERY HARD to go HG vs a Brood in the midgame, as every single time your enemies go for a push you could already be knocking at their HG and forcing rotations before they could even take a t1/t2 tower.

When and where to fight:

The key question here is not how to fight as Brood, but when and where. Thanks to the way your webs work, you are naturally much stronger in parts of the map where you have multiple webs situated. This is important because enemies know this and they will try to force fights in other areas.

The solution is simple: if enemies are trying to fight in an area you don’t control, you simply split-push as hard as you can. This will force them back. And if your team wants to force fights, it’s best to do it close to the part of the map that Brood controls so that she can join easily. In that sense Brood rarely participates in defensive fights but can easily participate in offensive ones.

How to fight:

Brood is not a very good team-fighter unless you are snowballing, in a normal fight, she usually plays the role of taking care of 1-2 key targets with her insane right click damage. Bloodthorn and Nullifier will allow you to kill literally any target you want, as long as you jump them first. Once you finish your items and you want to go for fights if you can’t kill everyone in one go it doesn’t matter. You can just keep killing them 1 by 1 every single time your ult is off CD while forcing buybacks slowly. In 1-3 minutes of fighting, you’ll be able to end the game

The biggest mistake an inexperienced Broodmother player would make is rushing into fights or rushing to end the game as they think Brood falls off. This is not true, Brood is an insanely strong late-game hero.

Blink Dagger can be an option if your target is staying in the back lines, BKB is a must as the rest of their team will just turn on you as soon as you go for that important target.

It’s always nice to get an Aegis before going for a HG push/team fight.

5-man pushing:

Brood doesn’t have a specific style for 5man pushing, mostly you’ll have to kill the key targets on the enemy team before attempting a 5 man push.

Split-Pushing:

This is what you’ll be doing most of the time, first important step here is to always be pushing waves towards the enemy. This makes sure that you’re always ready to just run all your spiders into a lane and start taking towers once your enemies show up somewhere else.

Keeping track of the map is the most important part for Brood in the midgame: you want to never allow your enemies to go for a 5man fight on another lane, as soon as you see them grouping up you should instantly be pushing your lane. If they keep committing to that fight, even if they wipe the rest of your team you’ll be able to Break HG and secure your team a very early victory. Otherwise, if they stop they could get wiped themselves. If a couple teleport you could pick them off or if you can’t - then simply go back to farming, just rinse and repeat until the next opportunity arrives.

A good example of a game-ending split-push by Brood and her team. If the enemy team comes to defend Brood’s push, then her teammates will have a greater chance to succeed in their push. If, however, the enemy team is occupied with fighting her teammates, she will very easily claim rax, which is often worth it even if your teammates die.

Brood doesn’t really gank: only if she has free webs to throw away, and it won’t mess up her previous webs too much.

That being said, if you have Orchid it is quite easy to pick-off heroes out of position with your ultimate and army. If not, you can still kill heroes very quickly with the armor reduction build, but you need them to be immobile.

You create space by controlling at least one lane and jungle with your webs and Spiderlings. Don’t forget to send a lone spider every once in a while to scout for potential enemy ganks.

As explained in the beginning Brood has two farming styles: one where she farms with all her spider army and a second one where she sends the spiders to the jungle while clearing the wave and making a new army. It is also important to note that Brood should focus on taking Ancients. A mid lane Brood could take multiple Ancient camps and the creep waves smaller camps in between.

If you clear 2 waves in the mid lane and 3 camps (ancient + hard + medium) a minute that’ll be more than 800+ GPM.

When you get more items you can now move into the enemy’s jungle where you’ll be able to get more camps - especially Ancient camps as they give lots of EXP.