Void is an unusual hero in the sense that he has carry potential and in the same time has a huge team fight control ability. Because of this, he can be used either as a carry or as an offlaner. Either way, he’s goal is to dominate team fights with Chronosphere - to kill his enemies while they’re frozen in time or to let his teammates do it for him.  

You generally want to pick Void when your teammates are mostly ranged and have abilities that deal a lot of damage so that they can easily finish-off your Chrono targets.

Void can arguably do well against almost any combination of heroes in the game, but watch out for direct counters to youр Chronosphere.

Generally speaking, you don’t want to go all-in on your draft with Chronosphere combos. It is easy to mess up a single Chrono and lose a fight because of it in this kind of drafts AND it puts more pressure on you to get multi-hero Chronos. If you know you have other sources of control and damage, a backup plan, it will take away a lot of the pressure and you will have the opportunity to use the Chronosphere more freely (e.g. to pick-off single targets even in a team fight).

Strategies aside, the most important thing to think about in pubs is whether your supports will be able to help you in the first 10 minutes of the game – even as an offlaner you need some farm to have an impact. The hardest Void games are the ones where you get totally owned in the laning stage, rather than the ones where there are counters to your Chrono.

The best position for Void. This is because the hero needs a time window to get his core items before he can start fighting and the safe lane is best suited for that.

Void has been a common pick on the offlane in the past. The strategy there is to survive using Time Walk and later on use Chronosphere to initiate and contribute in fights while still getting farm and hopefully transitioning to a semi-carry in the late game. 

Good friends to have are:

Strong Against:

Weak Against:

As Void, your skill build is not really versatile. You want to have Time Walk and Time Lock maxed first and the Chrono on every possible level. Time Dilation is not that strong in the early game as people don’t spam their spells too much, although a value point in it is sometimes useful.

At level 1 it’s advisable to hold your skill point. You may need to run away or chase enemies in which case you’d want to skill Time Walk. If nothing happens, you can wait until you see what lane you’re playing against (if you don’t already know) – if it’s a melee hero you can potentially harass him with Time Lock if a teammate helps you. Against ranged heroes and without kill opportunities provided by your teammates, Time Walk would probably be better.

This build revolves around getting a Mask of Madness and using it to find solo kills on enemies. Later on, you get a Shadow Blade for better ganking potential as it allows you to sneak on enemies and to move around the map undetected by wards. After that, the items you build are situational, most common one being BKB followed by DPS items.  

As the name suggests, this build is more farm-oriented. This doesn’t mean you don’t fight, you just pick a Battle Fury first in order to farm more when your Chrono is on CD. A good approach for a pos. 1 Void, but the downside is that your fight impact will be lower in the early-mid game. After that, you still proceed with items like MoM, Manta, BKB, Butterfly, etc.

Another option is to buy MoM first for the solo kill potential and to farm Battle Fury after that, which is more of a hybrid build. 

With access to less farm (e.g. pos. 3 Void), you use cheap items like Vladmir’s to farm, Diffusal + Manta for DPS and Blink Dagger for initiation. MoM is also an option here but it’s riskier. 

Void starts with a very high base damage which, combined with Quelling Blade, allows you to last hit every creep on the lane. He’s a melee hero and his animation is good too. Not many heroes can contest your last hits. The damage is also usually enough for denying so you shouldn’t have issues with that.

Once you get your Power Threads and eventually a Morbid Mask you can start farming the jungle camps close to your safe lane. Just clear the creep wave as fast as possible, farm the big camp and return to your lane. You shouldn’t miss any creeps that way, but be careful because you don’t have creep clearing abilities like some other carries.

If you’re up against a melee hero you can start harassing them at level 3 (with 2 points in Time Lock). Against ranged heroes you will need a support to slow/disable them, otherwise just keep last hitting and denying.

You can also use Time Walk to heal after the enemy hits you with a spell.

Void is usually not an easy hero to kill early on as heroes don’t have the levels and items to burst him before he can Time Walk. The only way you die is if you get ganked by multiple heroes with disables. So keep an eye on your minimap, check for missing heroes and you should be fine.

You also want to have a Magic Stick as early as possible and eventually Raindrops which will make you almost impossible to kill. When you stay on the lane also keep your Power Threads on strength for maximum HP.

Before level 6 you just want to farm. The only kills you should participate in are the ones that your supports set up on your lane.

Once you reach lvl 7-8, you can start looking for good Chrono opportunities. Using it for the offlaner is not bad either on the early levels. If your team is being dived somewhere, you can teleport to help them. Or you can gank the enemy carry/mid if you already have MoM.

A mistake that a lot of players make is that they get MoM and fall under the impression that they should only fight. Ideally, you don’t want to fight at all if your Chrono is on cooldown, you want to keep farming and get more items. The kills with Chrono and MoM are just a bonus.

If you are going for a BF build your solo kill potential will be lower. Make sure you have allies to help you if you decide to go for a kill.

In this game, we’re going to observe old man Fear’s Void. 

He’s playing against a Pangolier 1v1, so he gets 2 points in Time Lock at level 3 and he starts trading hits very effectively. 

Take a note how he uses Time Walk to heal from the Swashbuckle damage – this is a common practice against any heroes with nukes on the lane.

Check how he starts clearing creep waves at min 8 and then goes to the jungle to farm the big camp. This is how you maximize your farm and he didn’t miss any creeps from the new wave either. 

He decides to go for the Battle Fury build and then gets Shadow Blade and MoM which allow him to claim a lot of solo kills later on, winning the game in the end. 

If you went for Shadow Blade, you can use it to find solo pick offs or to initiate ganks much more effectively than with just MoM.

The key item you want after your core items is usually BKB. Once you have that you can start looking for team fights, not just small ganks or skirmishes. You want to win fights and get objectives like Roshan and towers after that – you are not a good pusher, so don’t waste an opportunity to claim a free objective.

You want to be only fighting with Chrono. If it’s on cooldown, you turn on farming mode again. Tell your team to wait until it’s ready and don’t take unnecessary fights. Unless you’re playing from behind and you need to be cautious, you want to always use Chrono as soon as it’s ready to get kills or win team fights.

With Void you have great late game potential and you’re not afraid of going to the late game.

If you are at a resource disadvantage, however, it is hard to win fights in the mid game. You and possibly your teammates will not have enough damage to kill tanky enemies easily during the Chrono duration, especially if their allies are there to protect them. This means that after a terrible laning stage you might have a problem reaching the late game at all.

To solve this problem your best option is to find pick-offs on lone farming enemies together with your teammates (smoke ganks work best) in order to slow down the enemy team and prolong the game.

Getting back in the game by farming is very hard as a Void - the problem is that you don’t have any wave-clearing abilities, so you have to spend more time exposed on a lane. Having Battle Fury makes it slightly easier, of course, but it is still easy to die from a gank you are farming in a risky position and even if you don’t – you are unlikely to be farming faster than the enemy cores, so you must be proactive.

As we already mentioned, you want to fight only when Chrono is up. It is one of the most powerful and feared disables in the game. Its duration is extremely long, the area of effect is huge and it’s holding heroes in BKB as well. 

That being said, when it comes to team fights you have 2 possible courses of action:

1. You initiate with Chronosphere – if there is no better initiator than you, you can try to catch a few heroes to start a fight. Chrono on one hero is still ok if it’s their mid or carry and your team follows up.
   
2. There is a better initiator than you, so you stay behind and let him do the job – once the fight starts, you follow the movements of the enemy heroes and you go in with Chrono when you see a good opportunity to catch multiple heroes. This option is harder because it is easy to catch ally heroes as well when the fight has started. This problem is bigger when your allies are mainly melee heroes and your enemies – ranged and vice versa.
   

A perfect Chrono is a one that also blocks or zones out the remaining enemy heroes. In the perfect situation, you want to catch a key enemy hero on the edge with the rest of the sphere denying terrain to the enemy team so they can’t help their teammate easily. This is relatively easy in narrow areas where trees or cliffs block the rest of the enemy team. 

Another way to use Chrono is to let your team fight the enemy front line heroes and to catch the supports and ranged cores on the back lines. First, in this way you leave the enemy front liners at a numbers disadvantage. Second, you catch the supports and ranged cores, who are much easier to kill in the Chrono, especially bearing in mind that the supports are the ones who are likely to have the defensive abilities that can mess-up your Chrono initiation. This is much easier to do with a Shadow Blade or Blink Dagger.

Illidan showcases the power of a double (Refresher) Chrono initiation in the late game and secures two kills on the enemy cores, which wins his team the game.

5-man pushing: Void is generally bad at sieging, so you want to push only after you’ve won a team fight or after a pick off. Of course, if you have a significant lead and e.g. Aegis you could push – hit the tower, mitigate damage with Time Walk if needed and search for good Chronos (as in the video above).

Split-Pushing: Even with Battle Fury to help him clear the waves, Void is horrible at hitting towers (unless he’s extremely fat). You prefer to stick with your team instead of soloing and use your ultimate to help them get some advantage.