Jakiro the Twin Head Dragon is a powerful utility hero that provides his team with a lot of control and damage over time. He is a potent pusher and can effectively pressure the enemy team right from the early stages of the game. THD’s skillset lets him shine in 5-man Dota and pushing strategies, yet his biggest flaw is that he is rather one dimensional.

Picking THD usually revolves more around your own team rather than your opponents’. If your allies could provide setup for good team fight combos and could accommodate a pushing play style then Jakiro is a great hero to have on your team.

Jakiro is mainly picked in competitive Dota for his pushing potential. He fits best aggressive early and mid game 5-man Dota drafts either as a support or as a core. He could also be drafted to complete a team fight combo (e.g. with DS or Siren). In such games, a 5^th position Jakiro is more viable because he functions like a more typical backline spell caster and doesn’t need too much tankiness to have a sufficient impact in pushes.

Jakiro he is not a bad hero even in different strategies: he can farm fast thanks to his AoE DOTs and push-out the lanes, which is a very useful trait to have in more passive games. He also scales well into the late game thanks to his talents.

Jakiro is a good lane support for three reasons:

1. He is very powerful at harassing – he could end up zoning out lane opponents and providing his carry with free farm.
   
2. He could use Ice Path to set up for kills or provide damage with Dual Breath
   
3. He can damage and push the enemy tower easily thanks to Liquid Fire
   

Jakiro is a very powerful lane support because he can trade harass favorably with enemy heroes with Dual Breath and Liquid Fire. This makes him strong not only as a safe lane support, but also as a support in an offensive dual or trilane.

Moreover, he is not a sacrificial defensive support that needs to stick with the team at all times. If you are not pushing as 5, with Jakiro you can push-out the waves and farm the jungle very efficiently. This creates some space for your cores and allows you to get more items than the traditional pos. 5 hero.

The reason to put Jakiro in the offlane is to give him access to more XP and Farm than he would get if played as a support. This will allow him to reach his core items faster – very valuable if you intend to use him as a core in a pushing strategy because it will allow him to be a tanky frontline pusher.

THD isn’t the best offlaner - he is fairly survivable and has very good harassing potential (can fight back the enemy supports efficiently), but he doesn’t have an escape mechanism and is vulnerable to lanes with good kill potential. Because of this you usually want to put Jakiro in the offlane with another support. The two off you can create a lot of pressure on the enemy safe lane – harassing, taking farm and even pushing the tower later on. Great lane partners are strong laners like Sand King or Naga, who can also rotate to gank the mid lane if the opportunity arises.

Substitutes:

Putting Jakiro 1v1 mid or in the safe lane is a very unconventional thing to do because of his farm independence. Nevertheless, it could work in certain situations. He is a very good 1v1 laner because of his harassing potential and could dominate some matchups.

In that sense, if you are certain that THD will do very good in the 1v1 matchup and if you need a tanky pusher for your aggressive pushing strat you could opt to put him in this position.

Good friends to have are:

Strong Against:

Weak Against:

Jakiro has diverse skill builds since all of his spells are useful in the early game.

More often than not you want to max Liquid Fire ASAP because the CD of the spell scales great with levels. This allows you to become much more efficient in harassing, farming and damaging towers.

Usually, you want at least one level in each skill for the utility it gives – the slow from Dual Breath and the stun from Ice Path. In some situations, however, it is possible to skip a skill in order to max the others faster. Generally speaking, the logic what to level is the following:

• If you need more damage in fights or you want to farm faster you get Dual Breath.
  
• If you need more control in fights/ganks you get Ice Path.
  
• if you want to push towers early you can max Liquid Fire.

Your ultimate on lvl6 is not the best - it requires a lot of mana, which you don’t have early on. You should take it only if you have good setup for it in your team.

On lvl1 you get either Dual Breath (for the slow and higher damage in kill attempts) or Liquid Fire for cheap harassing.

The focus of this build is to make cost-efficient easy to build items that benefit not only yourself but your team. You don’t emphasize a lot on tankiness because you intend to play more like a back-line spell caster.

You get Tranquil Boots ASAP: this allows you to rotate around the map more efficiently (useful for early game ganks) and to sustain your HP without buying consumables or going back to the fountain.

In the mid game, your main focus is to provide yourself with mobility – you buy Eul’s for the additional MS and the ability to setup targets for your own spells. Afterward Force Staff allows you to position yourself favorably but also to help out your allies if needed.

If the game goes late you invest in Lotus Orb to keep your allies safe. In the super late game Aghanim’s is very useful for high ground and Roshan fights, but other luxury items are also possible.

Arcane Boots and Eul’s will give you the needed mana sustain to constantly farm and fight with your team.

In the mid game, you disassemble the Arcanes into Aether and buy a Blink. The Lens cast range synergizes very well not only with your spells but also with the Eul’s and Blink and in the late game – with Hex. With this build, you can easily initiate fights with Blink + Eul’s/Hex into your spells.

In the super late game, you can go for whatever luxury items the game calls for, but Aghanim’s into Octarine is a standard choice.

You start with a Null, Branch and Faerie Fire to increase your right click damage to contest last hits. You get another Null ASAP and later on make a Veil of the two Nulls, which increases your DPS.

A fast Eul’s will make any aggression on your side more effective – with Veil you deal a lot of damage, but you need a setup. You can substitute it with Rod of Atos if you are feeling rich. Afterward, Aether Lens further increases your spell impact and makes you very strong in the mid game with your multiple cost-efficient items.

In the late game you get Aghanim’s + Octarine + Refresher in maximize the impact of your ultimate. Alternative items, of course, are possible depending on the game.

The goal of this build is to sustain your farm, to increase your DPS output and to allow you to win fights and push towers with your team. In the late game you want to maximize your team fight impact.

Your spells deal DoT, so you cannot reliably use them to take last hits. You can use them to push out the lane if you want to do so, but you will still have to time your attacks to take last hits. In that sense, Jakiro isn’t a very good hero to win last hit wars. You should try to harass to push your opponent backward and then take uncontested last hits.

The actual attack of THD isn’t too bad – he has decent animation and above average damage for a ranged hero.

Thanks to your spammable AoE spells you can start clearing jungle camps in the laning stage to accelerate your farm. You can do this both as a core and as a support – of course, the more mana sustain you have for Dual Breath the faster you will be able to farm this way. To farm the jungle efficiently the most important thing is to utilize stacking.

Jakiro is great at harassing mainly because of Liquid Fire. The spell costs no mana, so the only restriction on how often you can harass with it is the CD (this is the main reason you want to max it first). Don’t put it on auto-cast – by manually using it you gain an additional 200 range and don’t draw creep aggro.

If you get into a hit exchange you shouldn’t back out too easily – Liquid Fire will lower the attack speed of your opponent, which should give you an edge. The 400 attack range could be a problem against other ranged heroes (they could try to kite you) – if this happens you can use your Dual Breath to slow them down and continue harassing.

Using Dual breath for harassing in the early game is powerful, however, it is mana intensive. You usually want to do it only if you have mana to spare and good mana sustain (e.g. with Bottle mid). Otherwise Liquid fire and passive harass should be enough against most opponents.

Using Ice Path to give yourself time to land a few additional attacks when harassing is not a bad idea – the spell is very cheap mana wise. Nevertheless, using Ice Path just for its damage is a bad idea since it is too low.

You are a slow hero without escape mechanisms and because of this even though you are tanky it is important not to overextend.

Usually, in order to disengage a bad situation, you need to use your disable and slow. Dual Breath is much easier to land than Ice Path and if the MS slow would be enough for you to disengage you shouldn’t waste time trying to cast Ice Path as well. Liquid Fire only slows attack speed, so you should use it only if you plan to fight back (it doesn’t help you at running away).

In case you see your opponents from a distance, the best move is to use your Ice Path to disable them before they initiate and to run away as fast as possible. Dodging Ice Path is much easier at melee range and because of this, you should use it as soon as possible, rather than after the enemy heroes are already right next to you.

You provide decent control and decent damage output but you usually don’t have enough of either to kill enemies in the early game. Because of this, you should attempt kills with the help of allies and when you are alone you should focus on harassing and zoning out.

You want to initiate a kill attempt with Ice Path. Ideally, you will use it after an ally has already initiated with a more reliable disable. Nevertheless, you could try to land the spell even without setup from a distance in case your allies have good follow-up.

If you don’t have setup for Ice Path but you manage to get close enough you could use Dual Breath first – the MS slow will allow you to hit Ice Path more reliably.

After initiating you want to cast Dual Breath and Liquid Fire immediately for the DoT and for the MS slow. Auto attacking while the target is slowed and casting Liquid Fire whenever available is your primary way to secure the kill.

After level 6, with Macropyre, you become more dangerous but you still need help to secure kills. Ice Path wouldn’t hold your target in Macropyre long enough to deal significant damage on its own. What you need to do is to let your allies initiate and cast Macropyre while your target is immobile. Then you can follow-up with Ice Path, your other spells and attacks to secure the kill.

Jakiro could start rotating right at lvl1 if his allies have enough kill potential – in that sense when you should rotate with Jakiro depends more on the kill potential of your allies rather than your own. Generally speaking, THD becomes strongest at ganking rotations when he has a point in each skill (lvl3 or 4 depending on build) because of the DoTs, the MS slow and the stun you have at this point.

For THD it is a viable thing to do to rotate in order to push rather than to gank. For example, if a lane is undefended and an ally is pressuring a tower you could TP and help out by using Liquid Fire on the tower and clearing the enemy creep waves.

If your allies have good control, getting Macropyre would be an important timing because you could use it to score a kill. Otherwise getting your ultimate doesn’t change your play style too much.

Your main strength is harassing and because of this, your goal in the lane would be to pressure the enemy offlaner. If successful you will be able to zone him out and to provide your carry with free farm.

Controlling the creep equilibrium is important in order to do this efficiently – you should pull whenever needed to keep the waves closer to your tower and to give yourself space to zone out the enemy hero.

Alternatively, if the creep waves are pushing towards the enemy tower you can use this opportunity to deal tower damage with Liquid Fire. Doing this repeatedly could result in an early tower kill but would give the enemy offlaner a lot of resources. If the lane is empty, you should always push the tower.

Most of the games as pos. 5 you need to buy chicken + 2 Obs, Tangoes (you have to pull 2 to your mid laner) and one Clarity. With Jakiro you don’t need clarity that much (since you can spam your 3^rd spell), so as we see in this game Jakiro starts with 2 obs, 1 sentry, and 3 tangoes.

He runs to the bottom and sees that there is no one there and his hero is not providing much at lvl1. So, he runs mid before the creeps spawn, so he can block the creeps for his midlaner DK, place the sentry and give vision for DK against Bounty.

He instantly TPs bottom after the block so that he doesn’t waste any time in zoning out the offlaner.

At lvl 1 he takes Dual Breath and starts harassing Monkey King as much as possible. After the lane pushes, he goes back and starts pulling the creeps. He manages to contribute to some kills with the help of the roaming Tuskar, but he mainly pulls and controls the runes in the early game

You have two qualities which make you a good offlaner: your tankiness and your harassing potential.

You are not the type of hero who can escape easily gank attempts, but you are capable of fighting back heroes that are trying to zone you out. Consequently, you are most effective in the offlane when you have a lane partner that can help you pressure your opponents even more.

Good lane partners are heroes that can help you pressure your lane opponents in the very early game:

The combined harassing potential of you and your partner will make it almost impossible for enemies to farm in the lane against you. You can even attempt to zone them out if they are a weak lane, or to push out the wave and damage the tower if they are not.

Having a lane partner that can rotate to gank other lanes is great because it gives you alternatives if the offensive dual lane isn’t working out.

Laning 1v1 with Jakiro is fairly simple: you have to take last hits and harass your lane opponent as much as possible. In order to be successful at the first objective you usually need to be successful at the second. The reason is that you are not the best at contesting last hits, but you are very good at harassing. Because of this, you will secure more farm for yourself if you pressure your opponent and push him backward.

As a solo, you would have more mana sustain than in other positions and you will be able to use Dual Breath for harass much more often. This will increase your potency even more and could allow you to even zone out some opponents in the later laning stage.

Both Dual Breath and Liquid Fire are AoE spells and if you want to keep the creep equilibrium you should be careful not to apply the DoT on the enemy creeps. If you have the equilibrium at a favorable for your position you can even zone out the enemy hero for a wave or two.

Pushing out the waves deliberately is also not a bad idea if you want to pressure the tower or if you want to get a rune or stack and farm the jungle. This is easy to do with a high level of Dual Breath and Liquid Fire.

When playing 1v1 you will rarely be able to solo kill your opponent – you don’t have nuke damage or very good control. Because of this, you shouldn’t be over aggressive to attempt kills. An overextension could cost you your life since you are a slow hero and enemy supports might rotate to your lane. It is better to play safe, take your farm and slowly but steadily harass your lane opponent.

Of course, if your opponent makes a mistake (overextend on low HP) you can capitalize on it by slowing him with Dual Breath and finishing him off with Liquid Fire and regular attacks.

Your play style with Jakiro depends a lot on the level of resources you have compared to the enemy team.

If you are under-farmed because of a bad laning stage outcome (or because you were a dedicated lane support), you have two possible choices.

1. You can stay close to your team and function as a regular back-line spell caster. Stay out of danger and assist your allies by providing control and some damage in fights.
   
2. If you have space on the map but your team isn’t pushing or ganking you can try to flash farm jungle camps to get your core items.
   

If you have a good level of resources you should use the opportunity to apply as much pressure as possible. The typical thing to do is to gather up with your team, push and force fights. If your opponents are spread up and farming, however, you can search for pick-offs with allies and push afterward.

In the mid and late game, your timings are mainly connected to the items you are getting.

• Get a control item and start ganking: Eul’s or other control items are ideal for finding pick-offs and ganking, especially when combined with mobility items.
  
• Get a tankiness item and force fights: Greaves, Rod of Atos, Pipe, or other items that give you survivability are ideal for forcing fights if you get them early enough.
  

Your main job with THD in team fights is to control the enemy team and possibly to provide damage under the right circumstances. Positioning is vital as is the accurate use of your spells.

Use Liquid Fire on right-clickers: In the mid and late game the damage aspect of Liquid Fire is much less important than the utility that the spell gives – you should try to apply the debuff on enemy carries without BKB to lower their DPS output.

Use Dual Breath on heroes that need to move: Similarly to Liquid Fire, later on in the game, the utility aspect of Dual Breath is more important than the DPS of the spell. It is important to apply the debuff on heroes that need to move during the fight (often melee damage dealers) – sometimes even more important than applying the debuff on multiple heroes.

Hit as many people as possible with Ice Path: This is one of the most central aspects of team-fighting for Jakiro because Ice Path is your main source of control. Even though the spell doesn’t have a long CD, you need to make sure that when you use it, it has an impact.
The best options in no particular order:

1. Wait to counter initiate: After the fight starts enemy heroes tend to clump-up in order to focus an ally. You can use the opportunity to land a multi-hero Ice Path.
   
2. Use items to setup: Use your own Eul’s or other items to set up a combo (Macro Pyre into Ice Path) and help bring a hero down.
   
3. Wait for allies to setup: You can wait for your allies to use their more reliable disables (Ravage, Chrono, Song of the Siren, etc.) and chain stun multiple enemies with Ice Path.
   

No matter which option you are using, you need to watch for your positioning and the angle you cast Ice Path at. Repositioning yourself with a mobility item could help you land the spell more efficiently.

Use Macropyre in team fight combos: Using your ultimate without reliable setup is unlikely to give good results. You need to be patient with it and wait for your allies to provide you with a good opportunity to use the spell. Usually, you need to wait for a good AoE initiation and then follow-up with Macropyre and Ice Path. If your team doesn’t have good AoE initiation you can use it as a damage source to pick-off one hero. To do it, however, the target needs to be disabled for some time.

In rare occasions you would need to use Macropyre as a zoning tool – usually to break up a fight and help your allies disengage. The spell doesn’t have a very long CD so it might be up the next time you need it. Nevertheless, this use is not optimal and if possible you should avoid it because if a fight does break out you wouldn’t have your most powerful source of damage.

Positioning:

Jakiro’s spells don’t require him to be in melee range so it is easiest to have an impact with the hero from a certain distance (easier to position yourself for Ice Path and easier to hit multi-hero Dual Breaths and Macropyre). In that sense, if you have a choice you should stay behind your initiators/frontline heroes and assist them with your spells as most other spellcasters in the game.

The main problem with this philosophy is that in order to push you need to be relatively close to the tower (at 600 range for Liquid Fire). This means that if you are forcing fight through pushing and your opponents initiate you will be on the front lines of the fight. In order to be successful with such positioning, you need to be certain that you have the needed survivability to live through the enemy initiation and contribute to the fight.

Example Vid:

Lil is playing an Agh’s + Refresher support Jakiro in the super late game. In a chaotic team fight, he uses his ultimate twice after Song of the Siren, which instantly evaporates the enemy support Disruptor and by the end of the fight kills the enemy carry PL, who is the most farmed hero on the map. Notice how Lil plays around his ultimates so that when the PL tries to focus him, he needs to do so on top of the Macro Pyre.

5-man pushing:

There are two possibilities:

If you have enough resources and you are tanky (or if your enemies cannot fight back for some reason) you should stay on the frontline and apply Liquid Fire to the tower. You shouldn’t overcommit – you can come closer to apply the Liquid Fire and afterward back-off a bit until your spell is available again. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t be afraid to stay on the front liens – if the enemy team needs to commit a lot to kill you off you will serve the role of a tank and will in that way give your allies freedom to take a favorable fight.

If you aren’t tanky enough and you expect your opponents to defend you should position yourself more defensively. Stay behind your allies and be ready to counter-initiate with Ice Path and your other abilities.

Split-Pushing:

Jakiro has good creep clear (Dual Breath and Liquid Fire) and very good tower damage (Liquid Fire), which makes him a decent split pusher. His main problem is his lack of mobility – if you get caught over-extending with the hero you will most probably die and you aren’t mobile enough to easily get in position to split-push.

In that sense, you can take advantage of convenient split-push opportunities but you should not take big risks with your positioning. Push out the waves and damage the enemy tower but once enemy heroes are missing quickly get back to your team.

Getting a mobility item like Blink Dagger could make split-pushing with the hero much easier and with the item you could relatively safely force reactions out of the enemy team.

Keep in mind at what stage of the game you are at. The later the game goes the slower and riskier your split-pushing becomes. Because of this at the mid game stages, split-pushing with Jakiro is not a bad tactic and could create problems for your enemies. At the late game stages, it is a better decision to stick to your team in order to make sure you are present for team fights and are not too vulnerable to ganks.

Anti-Pushing:

Your spells have low CD and could easily be used to anti-push. Usually, you want to use Dual Breath from long range on groups of creeps and Ice Path from long range on enemy heroes hitting your towers. Getting close enough to apply Liquid Fire is smart only if you are certain the enemy team cannot initiate on you.

If the enemy team is committing to the push with a lot of resources (summoned units, heroes, etc.) and your team really needs to stall the game you could use your Macropyre in combination with your other spells. This should usually be enough to kill off the units and delay the push, but you wouldn’t have the spell if you need to fight shortly after. This strategy is very strong with an Aghanim's because of the 30 second path duration and huge path distance.

The main problem with ganking with Jakiro is initiation and sufficient control. If you have a control item like Eul’s Scepter you can initiate much more reliably and start ganks. By using your whole Eul into Macropyre and Ice Path combo you can even solo kill squishier targets, but more often than not you are a bad solo ganker and you need back up from your allies to secure kills. Having mobility items will also increase your ganking potential since you will be able to get in range for Eul’s more easily.

Consider the target you are initiating – if you are ganking with Eul’s a carry with BKB you might give it an opportunity to activate the spell immunity and escape the gank. You should leave more reliable initiators to start the gank on such targets.

Without the help of such setup items, your main job in ganks is to follow-up the initiation of your allies with damage (possibly Macropyre) and control (a follow-up Ice Path to chain stun your target).

Moreover, with well-positioned Ice Paths you can make counter-ganking harder for the enemy team.

In the support position, it is part of your job to provide vision through Observers and Sentries. Since THD is not too item dependent even if you are not a support it is not a bad idea to help out with Observers and Sentries once you have your important core items.

Your Ice Path gives flying vision and consequently, you can easily use it (it has very long range) to scout from a safe distance. For example, you could possibly check if the enemy team is doing Roshan or simply scout high grounds.

Mechanics:

Farming with Jakiro is quite straightforward – you have multiple sources of AoE damage. With mana sustain you should use mainly Dual Breath and Liquid Fire to clear creep waves and camps. Stacking is useful because you deal mainly AoE DPS.

It is possible to use Macropyre and your other spells to clear a large stack quicker – the spell has a relatively short CD. Don’t do this if you expect to fight soon, though.

Priority:

Your first priority is applying pressure through pushing. If you cannot do this, however, you should try to push-out the waves, farm and stack the jungle. Pushing out the waves creates space for your cores as it forces a reaction from the enemy team. Even as a support you can usually afford to play more greedily in order to get bigger items for the late game.