Lion is one of the strongest nukers in Dota 2. He also has great disables that allow him to initiate, counter-initiate and CC enemies for a long time during engagements. His high control and nuke potential makes him a great ganker right from the early stages of the game and the fact that he is relatively resource independent make him a very well-rounded support hero.

Lion is usually played as a support and very rarely as a solo Mid. As a support, he does quite well against most offlaners when combined with carries with good damage thanks to his great disables. He can also utilize his kill potential through roaming.

When picking Lion you want to provide good setup and control for heroes that need to deal damage but can’t get close to their targets because they lack lockdown. Lion’s good initiation and burst potential are very powerful, especially against elusive targets.

Usually, you want to get Lion as a ganker/initiator to counter specific heroes (typically mobile/elusive enemies) that would otherwise be very hard to gank and shut down. Lion is great at ganking early on and starting fights in the mid and late game when he gets a mobility item like Blink Dagger. When you draft the hero, you want to have good support and core partners for him that can benefit from his great control spells and deal high amounts of damage.

When it comes to substituting Lion in a strategy, you need to decide which aspect of Lion you need to search for in your substitute. If you want to pick Lion for his disables, you should look towards picking another hero that provides a lot of control and initiation (e.g. Rhasta). If your idea for drafting Lion is his burst, you can get a hero with a lot of nukes but fewer disables (Lina).

Lion is good at dealing with the enemy offlaner early on. If you combine Lion with partners that have good damage burst but need lockdown (Gyro, Ursa, Jugg), the enemy offlaner will have a hard time getting close to EXP/farm range. If the opponent gets out of position, your disables will usually give enough time to your carry and ideally the other support to get close to kill the offlaner.

With Lion, you can also roam from early on and set up ganks all over the map. You can combine the hero with another strong early ganking support to increase the pressure on the lanes. Lion doesn’t need a lot of levels to start roaming. In fact, you can be very effective even at level one and two, but you are pretty slow so you usually want your boots before you start roaming.

Lion has relatively bad stats and deals low damage, which means he is not great in offensive dual and triplanes and he prefers to be a safe lane support when he can zone out, pull,  and roam later in the laning stage.

The idea of Lion mid is to secure level 6 and a first mobility item (usually Blink Dagger) much faster than you could in a support position. Once he reaches those objectives, Lion can start ganking and setting up kills around the map very efficiently. In contrast, a support Lion will need a lot more time to get the required gold and XP and will miss a valuable ganking timing.

This, however, is very unusual nowadays because you want your mid to be a much better farmer with much greater carry potential. That being said, if both of your side lane cores are farming carries, then a mid Lion to rotate and create space is not terrible and could work.

Good friends to have are:

Strong Against:

Weak Against:

Lion’s skill builds aren’t very versatile. You always skill up Earth Spike with priority because the spell scales better than the hero’s other skills. Getting 1 point in Hex is also very common since the spell disables for 2.5 seconds on lvl 1. After getting one point in Hex and 4 points in Earth Spike you would usually want to max your Mana Drain to slow targets and counter mana-dependent heroes in fights and to be able to restore your Mana quickly without going back to base. The variation in Lion skill builds is usually when to get the first point in each spell. Earth Spike on lvl1, Hex on lvl2 and Mana Drain on lvl4 is the standard build, but depending on the situation it is possible to e.g. get Mana Drain earlier.

Lion is a hero for whom mobility is critical because it allows him to get within range of his targets and to disable them. Therefore, the core of his item choices aims at providing enough mobility to give the hero the needed initiation potential. Since Lion isn’t a carry, the rest of his choices are standard support and utility items.

The proposed build fits a support, Lion. You start with Tranquil Boots that help you regen HP and move faster around the map so you can gank and help out struggling lanes. The wand gives you some cheap stats and helps out with your mana problems. You rush your Blink Dagger right after in order to initiate ganks and fights. You decide to go for a Force Staff for more mobility and the ability to save your teammates and in the late game, you invest in Lotus Orb.

You start with Lace to be able to latch onto opponents with Hex easier. The idea is to roam and gank in the early game and set up kills for your team. In the early game, you buy the regular support items if you need to but you try to save up for your Blink Dagger and get it ASAP. If you are successful in your ganks and you make use of pulls you should do so in a decent timing. After getting the Blink you finish Arcanes and immediately disassemble them to finish your Aether Lens. Afterward you get a Glimmer Cape to make your allies more survivable. In the late game, you get an Aghanim’s for the AoE damage.

Earth Spike allows you to last hit multiple creeps and in the same time mess up the last hitting of your lane opponents (by stunning them and denying creeps while they are disabled). The Mana sustain coming from Mana Drain helps you keep spamming your abilities. You will be doing this only when your core has left you alone in the lane e.g. in order to get your Blink Dagger faster.

Passive Harass:

You have a decent attack animation, good damage, and high range –against melee heroes or ranged heroes with a lower range, you should be able to use your attacks to harass quite easily by kiting.

Against most ranged heroes you need to be careful - you are a slow hero with relatively low armor. If you get in trouble you should use your disable to disengage.

Active Harass: 

You have two abilities that allow you to harass the enemy. 

First, Earth Spike is a spammable spell that both stuns and damages the opponents. As we mentioned above, the stunning aspect of the spell is quite important in the laning stage – you can mess up the last hitting of the enemy hero. When you Earth Spike reaches level 2-3 you should focus even more on harassing with it as the spell will deal significant damage. Before that, use Earth Spike only to disrupt the last hits of the enemy hero – it is not worth it to cast it on the opponent just to deal 60 damage and achieve nothing else.

Second, Mana Drain, although it does no damage, is a great harassing tool – by draining enemies’ mana you prevent them from using their spells offensively or defensively. To make sure that you drain a lot of the opponent’s Mana, you should first cast stun and immediately cast the Mana Drain.

Bear in mind that even if you don’t use Hex or Earth Spike it might be worth it to cast Mana Drain on your lane opponent in some situations. This way you will force him/her to move back to break the link and thus zone him out of last hit range. Don’t forget that the break range is longer than the Mana Drain cast range.

Before you reach level 6 you have no real kill potential on your own. Nonetheless, you have a very good latching potential. You can set up kills for your allies – go in, use Hex on a target and start auto-attacking. Just as the duration of the Hex wears off (2.5 seconds), use Earth Spike to follow up – try to use it before the Hex ends because enemies can use an escape mechanism in between the two spells and get away.

Once you hit level 6, the damage burst coming from your ultimate allows you to solo kill most heroes on your own. You can initiate with Hex, start auto-attacking, then follow up with Earth Spike and finish the target with Finger of Death. It is better to cast your ult at the end for two reasons: first, the spell has a very high casting range (900) and you can use it on the enemy from afar (when it starts running away and exits your attack range). Second, you don’t want to waste your ultimate firs. Instead, check if a kill is likely to happen. For example, if you use the ult right away, an enemy support might come and save his teammate and your ultimate will be wasted.

Mind your mana pool. All your spells are mana intensive and it might be the case that you don’t have enough mana for Finger of Death after you cast Hex and Spike. If you don’t have enough mana for all three spells but you think you can still get a kill you can use some of the disable duration for draining mana instead of auto-attacking until you have enough for your ultimate.

During pushes, you can cast Earth Spike to help to clear out the creep wave. Use Mana Drain on a ranged creep to sustain your Mana. Try to stay as further behind as possible – you are a very squishy hero without escape and if you get initiated upon you will die very fast. Stay in a safe position behind your teammates and be ready to counter initiate with your disables if a fight starts.  

In the laning stage there are two important timings for you:

The first one is when you get your brown Boots or Tranquils. The faster MS will allow you to initiate on targets easier and so set up more kills/ganks around the map.z6ZGb

The second timing is when you get your ultimate. You should try to get a successful gank right away either on your own or together with a teammate and use the ult to burst down a target. The ultimate has a long cooldown which means that you need to make each use count. This doesn’t mean saving it – on the contrary, if you can you should use it on cooldown. The important thing is not to waste it and to gank in a safe way which will secure you the kill (with a ganking partner, using smoke, etc.).

For a core Lion, if you manage to get your mobility item during the laning phase this is your third timing – it will make roaming to get kills even easier.

Ganking:

Lion is a very good ganker early on – he provides a lot of disables. You will need, however, someone else to deal the damage because Lion has almost no damage output early on. When you are ganking, you usually have to be the initiator because you have one of the most reliable disables in the game – Hex. Your allies should follow up your Hex initiation. The only case this isn’t true is when your ally has a reliable disable with higher range (e.g. Earthshaker’s stun), given that you need to get close to use Hex (500 range).

Counter Ganking:

Lion is a good hero for counter-ganking mainly because of his strong disables early on. For example, if an enemy dives your ally under the tower, you can teleport, instant Hex him and then follow up with your stun – in combination, both spells will provide a very long disable that will allow your ally to either run away or turn around to get a kill on the CC-ed target.

Lion usually starts the laning stage as a babysitter for the safe lane carry (that ideally has kill potential) and later on transitions to a roamer.

You are good at harassing - you can use both your high range auto-attacks and Mana Drain to keep the enemy out of farm/experience range. Moreover, the threat of getting disabled by you forces enemies to play very defensively. The setup potential that Lion has at early levels is very high – at level three you can keep a target disabled for more than 4 seconds. Almost as much as a maximum range Mirana Arrow and far more reliable.

When it comes to types of offlaners there are two possible situations:

Against a melee offlaner, passive harass is quite useful. You have a very high range – you can kite the enemy hero and not allow him to get close to exchange attacks. Against a ranged offlaner, passive harass might not work in your favor. Lion has low armor and low MS – you will likely be forced to back-off against most ranged offlaners. You can use Mana Drain against both ranged and melee offlaners. When the enemy gets close to you, you can Hex him and start draining his Mana.

Mana Drain can be a reliable way to force mana dependent opponents to run back.

After your carry has a big enough advantage in the lane and after you get boots you can leave him/her alone and start roaming. This usually means ganking the mid lane with the help of your other support.

Either one goes well with Lion. You are a good babysitter because you can deal with most offlaners thanks to your initiation potential and the harassment coming from your high range auto-attacks, Mana Drain and Earth Spike. You are also a good semi-support because you can pull to get your ultimate faster (and become a very strong ganker) and because you have great disables at early levels and you can efficiently rotate between lanes constantly and attempt ganks.

Lion is a good lane partner for carries that have a good damage output early on and can use the control that Lion provides to get kills. If your partner lacks damage, your dual lane will be quite underwhelming – you will have good control but no kill potential. As a result, enemies can play much more aggressively knowing that their positioning can’t be punished. 

Carries with kill potential: Gyro, Ursa, Jugg, Slark

Lion goes to an offensive lane with Doom and Lycan in an attempt to shut down Tiny. Lion starts with all supporting items and has only 3 Tangoes and a Clarity, but with good positioning and good usage of his spells, his teammates and him manage to kill the Jakiro and pressure the enemy Tiny. Because he is the squishiest hero and the easiest target to kill, he makes sure he stays behind his tankier allies. This helps him to stay alive during multiple excahanges.

Notice how at min 2 Lion body blocks the small camp before taking the rune so Radiant can`t pull to disrupt the creep equilibrium even though they managed to deward.

Pulling the creeps like Lion does at 4:30 is always important when you go for agro lanes because when the creep wave is near their tower. This way you will either deny a lot of resources to them, or they will be forced to fight for the wave as it happens and this example, which costs Jakiro his life.

At 05:50 he TPs to the mid lane because he notices the enemy team is tower diving his Tinker. This results in an easy counter kill and an additional kill when Tinker TPs back to lane.

Finally, after getting lvl6 he immediately finds an opportunity to use his ultimate for a kill. Notice that he even brings himself a Smoke to try to gank with Finger, but because a fight breaks out near him he doesn’t use it right away.

Lion is a very unconventional mid as he is not a strong laner, he is a slow farmer and he doesn’t scale with farm as much as most other traditional mid laners. Nonetheless, if you have greedy cores in the safe and offlane you can play Lion mid, get lvl6 and Blink as fast as possible and rotate for ganks to create space for your allies.

Your focus in the lane should be to get to level 6 as fast as possible, ideally before the enemy mid laner. Once you get your ultimate, you will be able to zone the opponent out of the lane - the threat of a kill will force him to play very defensively. Therefore, you should focus on last hitting and using your Earth Spike to mess up the enemy last-hitting. Ideally, you will have roaming supports that can help you get kills in the lane with your long disables.

Lion is very squishy and has no escape – when playing him mid you are an easy gank target. Take advantage of your high attack range and try to stay in a safe position on the high ground when you are last hitting. If you are getting ganked, you have two good spells to disengage. Try to immediately use Earth Spike from afar to stun incoming enemy heroes (if you target the ground, you can disable opponents from 950 range). If enemies are slower than you (which will be usually the case when they have no boots) it might be better not to waste time stunning the heroes but to simply run away. If an opponent somehow gets within 500 range before you can react, it will be better to use Hex on him because it is instant – if you use Earth Spike you can give him enough time to cast his spells on you. Of course, the enemy initiator is your main disable priority but bear in mind that you can disable multiple heroes even only with your Spike if they are close to each other.

As we mentioned, your focus mid should be on last-hitting/denying and getting level 6 before the enemy hero does. With Mana Drain, you should be able to use Spike almost on cooldown. Ideally, you want to both last hit with your Earth Spike and prevent the enemy from getting a last hit (and at the same time harass, of course). Therefore, use it on the mid hero when an enemy and an ally creep (that your opponent wants to last hit) are both on low Health.

When it comes to Rune Control, Lion is usually at a disadvantage. He is a slow hero and has no mobility spell. Moreover, his Earth Spike doesn’t deal a lot of damage to clear out the creep wave fast enough (even at level 3, the spell deals only 200 AoE damage). Nevertheless, you can still use it to push out the wave and then go for the rune. Since you are a slow hero without escape, going for the rune when you don’t have vision on enemy supports can be dangerous – you will likely die if you get initiated upon. To your advantage though, you have some decent disengaging abilities - you can cast your stun from afar (remember that Earth Spike hits units up to 950 range) and prevent them from getting close enough to initiate. Your Hex is also a good disengaging tool.

Your only option is to try to zone out with Mana Drain and force your opponents to run out of last hit range in order to break the link. In some cases, however, this might prove to be ineffective (if your opponent already has no mana or has a Bottle to recharge it). Because of this, you would usually want to focus on last-hitting/denying. Once you get your ult, however, you can zone out the enemy much more efficiently – the threat of a kill once you have Finger of Death will force the enemy to stay away from your initiation range. If the enemy mid laner isn’t very survivable but still gets too close to you, you should attempt to punish his positioning and get a kill. To more survivable enemies you might need help to deal sufficient damage.

When you are playing Mid your two important timings are when you get your ultimate at level 6 and your mobility item (usually Blink Dagger). With Finger of Death you can easily gank other lanes and even get solo pick-offs on the enemy mid.  Once you get your Blink, your initiation potential increases greatly.

Because your first important timing is leveling up your ult, your first rotation is also around this time point. Keep in mind that Lion doesn’t have a mobility spell to help him rotate faster or move around enemy Observer Wards (for example, heroes with Blink like QoP can use their spell to go around places where enemies have vision and so make her movement more unpredictable). Therefore, the rotations of Lion are quite predictable as is his movement around the map. Most likely you will need to Smoke either alone or together with a support to attempt a gank. The other option is to use a TP scroll to get in position as fast as possible.

If the Laning Stage went poorly for you and you are very under-leveled (having not even reached lvl 6) you should try to get your ultimate as fast as possible and get some kills out of it. You can either occupy a lane, get resources with pulls or use your ganking potential to get kills on enemies around the map and so recover from the bad laning stage. If there are free lanes and you are not in position to pressure your opponents it would be better to farm up and get your ultimate (and possibly mobility item). More often than not, however, you cannot afford to be passive after a laning stage. You likely wouldn’t have the map control to farm not only your carries but also yourself. Because of this, it is worth it to Smoke up and be active around your map with other strong gankers in your team. 

If the Laning stage went very well for you and you managed to get your levels and even a mobility item, you should use this opportunity to pressure your opponents and gank/initiate team fights more frequently. By using your ganking potential fully you will create a lot of space on the map for your allies to farm up and get gold and XP advantage over the enemy team.

5-man Pushing

When pushing together with your team, your positioning should usually be on the back lines of your team. You are quite squishy and an easy target to burst down quickly. Make sure, however, to be close enough to your allies so that you can counter-initiate with your stun and Hex. 

Only in rare circumstances, when the enemy team is at a great disadvantage and doesn’t have good initiators, can you stay up front and initiate on the heroes that get close to try to defend the tower. This will be more effective if you are staying hidden on the sides of your team, rather than when standing in plain sight in front of the tower. Your team can then quickly follow up and get kills if you manage to latch.

No matter the situation, you have very insignificant physical damage output and it isn’t worth it to take a risky position, stay in front and hit the tower. 

Split-Pushing

You are a weak split-pusher because you have no escape mechanism and little AoE damage to push out waves fast. You are a good hero, however, when it comes to punishing Split-pushers – you can initiate on them with your Hex and burst them down together with an ally or even on your own (especially if the Split-pushers are squishy or on low HP).

Anti-Pushing

 In terms of anti-pushing, you have only Earth Spike, which has decent cast range but damages units only in a straight line. The 25th level Earth Spike range also helps out a lot in this regard as it allows you to use it from a very safe distance.

Your anti pushing potential rises greatly if you build Aghanims since your Ultimate will start dealing AoE damage and you will be able to use it to clear the whole creep wave + damage all pushing heroes a great deal.

Lion is a very good ganker and initiating will be one of your top priorities in the mid and late game. As an initiator, you have to make the choice of whom to disable first. When you are ganking more than one hero, it is generally better to Hex the BKB-carrier since he won’t be able to use the item while disabled and stun the other heroes. Alternatively, you can focus everything on the BKB-carrier and nuke him down with both Earth Spike and ultimate.

Ideally, you want to stun more than 1 hero with your Earth Spike when ganking - this will make it hard for the enemy heroes to counter-initiate and potentially save the target you are focusing (for example their carry). To do this you need to use your mobility item and position yourself in a straight line with at least two enemies. Follow up by Hexing the more dangerous (or more elusive) target that you want to disable for longer.

When Saksa gets his Blink Dagger, he immediately smokes up with his teammate (Naga) and enters the enemy jungle in an attempt to find and kill the enemy farming carry – Terrorblade. In this example this move costs him his life, but wins his team a good fight, which is always a worthwhile trade for a pos. 5 support.

As a support, it is your task to win the Ward wars against the enemy supports. However, since you need to get your mobility item as soon a possible to initiate better, you might leave the warding/dewarding task for your second support. This is the case only if your other support is resource independent, of course. 

When you initiate fights or ganks, make sure to check out the positioning of enemy heroes. If you jump on 1 enemy and the rest of his team are very close, they can reinitiate on you and turn the fight around. You are very vulnerable to counter-initiations because you are very squishy and without an escape mechanism.

Who to initiate on:

There are two types of enemies that you want to initiate on: BKB-carriers (usually the enemy core heroes) and very mobile but squishy enemies like Weaver, QoP, Storm, Ember Spirit, etc. If your team has enough burst damage output to bring down the enemy BKB-carrier while he is disabled and can’t use BKB, then you should initiate on him. Most of the time he will be the important core hero for the enemy team and if you manage to kill him at the start of the fight, the opponents will likely lose the engagement. If, on the other hand, he is quite tanky and you cannot kill him during the disable, it would be better to Hex a mobile enemy that will also be impactful in the fight.

In most situations, Hex will be the first spell you use when  - especially if you want to disable a target before it pops BKB. Yet sometimes, if enemies are grouped up, it will be better to jump in and stun multiple opponents. Nonetheless, if one of those heroes that you initiate on with Earth Spike has quick reflexes, he can use BKB and dodge the stun. If he is a good initiator/team fight controller like Brewmaster or Magnus, he might turn around the fight. It would be better in that scenario to Hex that hero first, use Earth Spike second and burst him down because without him the enemy team would have lower chances to win the engagement. 

Spells to use after the initiation and hero movement:

After your Hex initiation, you should follow up with Earth Spike. If your Hex-target gets killed quickly, it would be better to use your stun on other enemies - try to disable as many heroes as possible. Usually, you want to use your Finger of Death on the Hex-target to make sure that it dies as quickly as possible. If your allies have a lot of burst and can kill the enemy hero fast enough without your ultimate, you can use it on someone else, of course. Keep in mind that a high-level finger combined with another nuke is usually enough to kill a squishy support. If you manage to eliminate such a target before it has any impact in the fight you are up to a good start.

After you have used your Hex, Earth Spike and Ultimate, try to disengage – move to a safer spot and try to make enemies lose sight of you (hide in the fog of war so that they can’t burst you down quickly). Your CD’s in the late game is relatively low and you will be able to use them again soon after the initial jump. After you back off a bit, you can cast Mana Drain on a mana-dependent hero – the break range is quite long. You will slow the target and allow your team to deal more damage. Don’t do this if you don’t want to reveal your positioning, of course.

If you have an Aghanim’s, try to use your ult on clumped-up opponents. If you have a front line tank and your opponents gather up to damage him you can use the opportunity to Spike and Finger multiple targets (of course, there are many other scenarios in which your opponents clump up, e.g. in chokes). Don’t wait too long for such an opportunity, however, unless you have heroes like Mag or Dark Seer that can set up for an AoE finger. The value of your ult comes from the nuke damage, which means that bursting down and killing one target can be more important than damaging multiple targets.

When it comes to farming, your primary tool is Earth Spike. You can use it on a creep wave or on neutrals and then cast Mana Drain on a ranged creep or on a neutral to recover your Mana. You can then back a bit and wait for Earth Spike to get off CD in order to repeat the procedure (of course, you should damage creeps with attacks as much as possible, bringing them to low HP so that you can clear them with Earth Spike faster).

You should try to farm up your mobility item (most likely Blink) by killing neutrals or farming in the lane. After you get that item, you won’t need a lot more items to be effective. It will usually be better to stick with your team and attempt fight initiation/ganks.