In today’s qualifier matches for Dota‘s The Summit 7, Natus Vincere’s Danil “Dendi” Ishutin found himself warped away from a fight by Vega Squadron’s Disruptor. With seconds to save himself, Dendi landed a chain onto a nearby tree and took a journey through space and time.
Image credit: Valve
Disruptor’s “Glimpse” ability warps an enemy hero back to wherever they were four seconds earlier. But Dendi’s hero, Timbersaw, has the “Timber Chain” ability, which launches a chain that latches Timbersaw to a tree and pulls him towards it.
Dendi was teleporting in from another lane, so if Disruptor landed the glimpse, Dendi would get sent well away from the fight.
You can see the blue particle effect on Dendi, indicating he had been glimpsed and had four seconds to respond. Timing here was critical — if Dendi chained too early, he might get teleported out after blowing the chain, but throwing it too late could mean missing the window. He needed the chain to be in-transit to a tree when he was flung back to his lane.
That disembodied chain from another dimension is the result — Dendi landed it and came flying back in to kill Disruptor. He died almost immediately afterwards but hey, style points.
For most Dota pros, this is a fairly standard trick that can be executed on multiple heroes. But in practice, it highlights the unique interactions that Dota abilities often have with each other, and the calm-under-pressure thinking required to play at a high-level. For a new player, it can be overwhelming to remember the range of Timber Chain at different levels; for high-level players, it’s often a mechanical motion, and it’s very possible Dendi expected to be glimpsed. It’s the kind of play that makes Dota 2 compelling to watch, because nowhere else will you get dendrophobic goblins in mech suits travelling through space and time on a chain.
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3 responses to “Dota Pro Counters Time Travel With Map-Wide Grappling Hook”
Its the Chen Pudge fountain hook all over again
Oh man… that got bought up on the Dota 2 subreddit the other day, and of course that meant I had to go back and watch that entire TongFu match again.
And afterwards, I obviously had to watch the video of Loda flipping out about it.
boot transport into maelstrom proc
https://youtu.be/JykbbjJYGAo
I think you undersell how difficult it is to nail the timing on this play.
The way Disruptor’s Glimpse ability works is, when he casts it on you, it spawns a projectile on your hero that travels to the location your hero was at 4 seconds ago. This projectle travels at either 600ms (faster than any hero in the game usually moves), or crosses the distance in 1.8 seconds, whichever is quicker.
So, with Dendi teleporting in from the other side of the map and the skill being instantly cast on him as soon as he arrives, he gets sent back in 1.8 seconds. Timberchain has a maximum range of 1400 at maxed level, and travels at 2800 units/s, meaning at the very max you have 0.5s before it hits a tree. Dendi needed to make sure he was inside that 0.5s window when the 1.8s timer expired and he was teleported back by glimpse….
… which is hella impressive.