The counter to Outworld Devourer

Ever since Quantic started using Outworld Devourer as solo mid in Dreamhack Summer, the hero has quickly exploded in the competitive scene and it is now the third most popular solo mid hero in both the East and West. When Sebastien '7ckingmad' Debs was interviewed, he mentioned that they know the counter to OD but obviously refused to announce the counter to their trademark hero.

Upon hearing that, the Gosucrew got our pen and paper out to list the heroes that may stand a chance against the black bird. We present to you, "The counter to Outworld Devourer".
 

Why is Outworld Devourer good?
 

• Scales well into mid-game and late-game
• Extremely high base damage
• Ablity to steal opponent's intelligence, reducing  mana and damage on intelligence heroes
• Almost never runs out of mana
• Doesn't give two hoots about your armor as Arcane Orb is pure damage

Outworld Devourer's weaknesses
 

• Vulnerable to smoke gank
• Very item dependent
• It's hard to recover from a bad start
• Isn't very good at stopping clearing waves and stopping pushes

Going one on one against Outworld Devourer is very tricky. Considering it's ability to steal intelligence, most intelligence heroes and agility, spell dependentm, heroes such as Shadow Fiend and Templar Assassin are rendered almost entirely useless when matched up. This leaves us with a very limited hero pool on what could go up against the black bird. After a few hours of brainstorming among ourselves, we narrowed it down to several choices.

Razor the Lightning Revenant

One of Zenith's favourite hero picks, we believe Razor is a very strong choice  to go up against Outworld Devourer. Razor, as a hero, isn't very mana-dependent as while Plasma Field (which takes up 125 mana at level one) does the most damage, Static Link is what makes Razor the scary hero that he is.

Static Link allows Razor to steal damage from his opponents and will continue to do so even when he is banished or when the opponent is immune to magic. Additionally, Static Link also costs only 20 mana to cast at level one and with an addition of only 10 extra mana at subsequent levels, meaning Razor isn't exactly mana dependent. With sufficient damage stolen, Razor can  out-last hit Outworld Devourer.

Razor versus Outworld Devourer:
 

• Low mana cost for Static Link
• Static Link is able to steal damage even when banished
• Is faster than Outworld Devourer
• Potential to out-last hit Outworld Devourer
• Scales well into mid and late-game.

Sylla the Lone Druid

Prior to the 6.78 patch, Lone Druid was used extensively as an off-lane solo, mostly because of how tanky the Spirit Bear is and its ability to disrupt the creep wave equilibrium and split push. When 6.78 patch rolled in last month, we've seen fewer teams picking him due to the Armlet nerf, but he's still a very viable pick to go against the Outworld Devourer.

Lone Druid practically does not use any mana in the laning phase because, well, he has no real skills to cast to begin with. The typical competitive Lone Druid would not opt for Rabid early on and would prefer to increase Synergy to make the Spirit Bear even more destructive. Outworld Devourer can use Astral Imprisonment on Lone Druid as much as he wants and it does nothing.

Combined with the Spirit Bear, Lone Druid last hits at a whopping damage of 81 at level one in comparison to Outworld Devourer's 57 damage.

Lone Druid versus Outworld Devourer:
 

• Astral Imprisonment does nothing to Lone Druid
• Lone Druid is able to last hit better than the Outworld Devourer
• Able to harrass
• Spirit Bear can be used to check for rune
• Scales well into mid-game as a split pusher
• Can be used to confuse opponents during draft due to his versatility.

There are many heroes that we touched upon during the brainstorming session and some of them, may or may not work against Outworld Devourer. The reason they are in the grey area is because we don't have enough data on how the hero would fair in the match up but you can feel free to test it out and discuss with us in the comment section.

  Lifestealer - We are not a big fan of Lifestealer versus Outworld Devourer but we have seen some teams run it in official games and it did considerably well in the match-up. Lifestealer did not exactly win the lane but he was able to pick up substantial farm to be of an impact in mid-game. There is no way a Lifestealer can kill OD though.

  Kunkka - Kunkka's Tidebringer may be troublesome for OD. It can be easily dodged but the threat of getting hit by an invisible wave may cause OD to back off and miss perhaps one creep everytime his sword turns shiny. Kunkka can also do well in mid-game as crowd control.

  Silencer - One interesting hero our editors brought up during the discussion is Silencer. Considering OD only has Astral Imprisonment as a skill to cancel Curse and Last Word, Silencer may be able to harrass OD out of the lane. The idea is to have Silencer cast Curse and Last Word AFTER OD casts Astral Imprisonment. We are not sure how long Silencer can keep this up though considering Last Word's cooldown (36 seconds) is twice of OD's Astral Imprisonment (18 seconds) at level one.

  Viper - Goblak actually ran this hero against OD a couple of times now and here's the reason why. The new and upgraded version of the Corrosive Skin can damage OD when he casts Astral Imprisonment on OD At level four, one Astral Imprisonment will cost OD 100 hp. However, this does mean that Viper have to invest more on the Corrosive Skin than his other passive. Viper's big range may also prevent OD from walking past the creep wave just to cast Astral Imprisonment on him.

  Huskar - Huskar will definitely make the list when the hero gets bloody added into Captain's Mode already. His Fire Arrow do not need mana to cast and can harrass OD out of the lane rather easily. OD can't really harrass Huskar too because he would hurt even more as his hp goes down.

Smoke of deceit

Well not Smoke of Deceit per se but to gank him. Outworld Devourer is very vulnerable to ganks in the lane and once pressured, OD will have a hard time recovering from it. OD may be able to buy time for his teammates to arrive by banishing himself, therefore, make sure the gank is swift and deadly.

Dual lane

Though it is highly unorthodox to run two heroes on the middle lane, teams have done it before and this proved to be extremely potent against solo heroes. Chain stuns would almost definitely spell a quick death to Outworld Destroyer and may even force the hero to switch lanes.