A guide to playing against Naga Sirens

In the current dota 2 meta there are a few heroes that will change your match entirely. From what items you will need to buy in order to counter that hero to what heroes you will need to pick in order to deal with that other hero on the battlefield. Example of these are things such as buying a force staff to get your teammates out of disruptors ulti or buying sentry wards to stop that bh or broodmother in their lanes. Getting an AA to maybe stop chen from mass healing his allies in the middle of a team fight is also an option.

A perfect example of such a match changing hero is Naga Siren. Naga is often times banned because people just don’t really know how to handle themselves against her and thats why this guide is dedicated entirely to helping the average player know how to counter a naga.

I think that a good way to start this topic is by pointing out what naga is exceptionally good at. Well lets start simple. She’s great in a trilane either offensive or defensive because of her ensnare and rip tide abilities. Since Naga will already be up next to the creeps in order to get her last hits it will be easy for her to initiate with her 650 range ensnare ability and await follow up from her lane companions to get a kill. Add the aoe damage and armor reduction from rip tide and naga easily becomes one of the strongest laners in the game.

  

The next big thing to understand about Naga is that she is an excellent farmer. Naga has a farming style very similar to lone druids in terms of that a good naga siren will understand that if her lane is too dangerous to farm in she can always make illusions to farm the lane while she herself can go into the jungle and farm there. The reason this works is because aside from the right click damage that the illusions do they also use riptide just like the real naga siren so it makes last hitting very easy and it doesn’t even matter if your illusions die as long as you got a few last hits in the lane with them before they did.

The third big thing to know about naga is her ultimate ability, Song of the Siren. Song of the Siren sleeps all enemy heroes and units around naga siren up to a ridiculous 1250 radius. Now of course everything that is slept is invulnerable so at least there’s that, but naga can turn off Song of the Siren whenever she wants, allowing for her teammates to get into position and then follow up some sort of ridiculous wombo combo. For some people, this ability alone is enough reason to ban naga in the first bans of Captains Mode. But let’s look into a few ways to counter this wombo combo.

  

I think in order to be most effective with this guide we must start with explaining the way Captains Mode picks and bans work. So at the start of Captains Mode each team is given 3 bans, one ban from a side at a time. Now assume that we want to let Naga slip through we have to then begin making a plan in order to be able to beat her in the game. The first thing you will want to do is ban heroes that go good with her or at least pick them. In my opinion the best example of a hero for this would be Dark Seer.

Dark seer goes great with Naga because he can actually vacuum and wall while Song of the Siren is activated. What this means is that Dark Seer completely repositions your team to his pleasing. Follow this up with an Enigma Black Hole and you almost stand no chance at that point.

Well the good news is that we have now taken our first step to countering Naga. So we know that we want to use at least one of our first three bans on Dark Seer. With Dark Seer banned from the match we now have to think of other heroes that are able to build up a wombo combo. These heroes are Tidehunter, Enigma, Sand King, Disruptor, Earthshaker, and sadly many many more.

The good news here is that aside from Kunkkas Tidebringer ability all wombo combo will come at you as magic damage. This making Black King Bar an amazing counter Naga item. The one other exception you can make an argument for is Faceless Void using Chronosphere and then right clicking you but this is not quite that strong as it will require much farm from void.

The important part to note here is that a lot of these heroes that combo great with Naga are also equally amazing at counter initiating her ultimate. For those of you that don’t know a good counter initiating hero is a hero that can turn the tide of a team fight specifically after the opposing team has initiated on them. Fairly obvious I know, but still important to point out.

A great example of a hero that can do this is Tidehunter. Tidehunter can get his ult off in a teamfight about 99% of the time due to his Kraken Shell ability which literally keeps him from getting chain stunned. Another great hero to keep in mind as a counter initiator is Enigma.

Unlike Tide however, Enigma actually requires items first before he can counter initiate. The usual Enigma build is a blink dagger but in a game against a Naga it is much more important to farm up a BKB first. The reason is because assuming you do initiate, Naga will very easily counter initiate you if you don't hit her in your Black Hole. The other thing is if she initiate with her ult and her teammates get good positioning you will not get the chance to use your blink. It will basically be a waste of an inventory space and more importantly a waste of 2150 gold.

The BKB however will make Enigma immune to magic so Enigma will be able to ult without being interrupted even after the enemy team has positioned themselves perfectly. All you have to do is spam the BKB button and try to get at least more then one of them into your black hole and your team will have the advantage in the team fight. Also if you do decide to go with this build you have to understand that more often than not you don’t want your enigma to go jumping in first with his ultimate but instead waiting until Naga sleeps or you are able to get Naga into the ultimate.

So now that we have understood these things we come back to our ban and pick phase. If they have first pick then ban out Dark Seer in the first 3 bans and let Naga slide. Assuming Enigma and/or Tidehunter have made it past the ban stage try and pick up one of them if not both of them. From here on out you have great counter initiate and you should no longer fear Song of the Siren in team fights. If anything you can almost use it as an advantage for your team because you will be able to see ahead of time where to place your black hole (assuming you did pick up the Enigma.)

I think that the picture above is a great example of when a team counters a Naga in the ban/picking phase. The Dire had the first pick in this picture and as you can see they banned out tidehunter and first picked the Naga. The other team did the right thing by banning out the Dark Seer and picking up the Leshrac Enigma as their first two picks.

Once Enigma and Leshrac are able to get their BKB's it will be almost impossible for any damage to come through to them from the dire's line up other then Morphling and Naga's right click damage. With such a push heavy lineup the radiant should be able to gain a quick tower advantage early in the game to the point where Morph and Naga's farms will not matter anymore. The radiant also were smart to pick Brewmaster because he will be able to ult and stun the Naga during Song of the Siren as Song of the Siren does not effect Brewmasters ultimate. 

In this picture I would say that the team with Naga were not as heavily outpicked as in the first picture but I would still like to talk about this draft. In this draft the team with Naga actually had the second pick but were still able to snatch up the Naga. However the reason that the radiant allowed them to pick Naga is because they were well prepared and most likely trying to practice against fighting Nagas. The radiant first picked Enigma and then followed up with Tide and Chen after seeing the Naga Dark Seer.

Now in my opinion I would have banned out the Dark Seer instead of the Sand King but it's ok. The wombo combo here is Naga ult into Dark Seer vaccum and wall along with disruptors kinetic field and static field. This is a great combo but once again if enigma managed to get a BKB then the tide's will turn on the dire team.

The static field is blocked by BKB and does not silence the Enigma once he is magic immune. The Tidehunter also will be able to get his ravage off after the Static field is gone because Enigmas ulti will give them the right amount of time. Again however the dire still have a strong line up and were not completely outdrafted here but this is summarizing what the radiant should do in order to win.

To summarize it all, when playing against a Naga it is important to get BKBs and save them for after Song of the Siren. Also picking up good counter initiates for when she turns off her ultimate are crucial. And last but not least try your best to not let the other team grab Naga, Enigma, and Dark Seer in one team together because that will be too much for you to handle.