Primal Beast Build DOTA 2 Build – Optimal Offlane Play
With over 120 heroes in DOTA 2 and nearly 200 items, constructing a viable item build to win you the game isn’t a walk in the park. Fortunately, we have prepared the perfect Primal Beast DOTA 2 build guide to help you dominate your games in the offlane.
Table of Contents
How to Play Primal Beast in DOTA 2
Primal Beast is a tanky hero known to have multiple AOE abilities capable of wreaking havoc on the battlefield. Due to its high strength gain and a tremendous amount of health, Primal Beast is primarily played as an offlaner.
Owing to its incredibly tanky stats, Primal Beast is built to be a sponge that can tank all the spells and damage the enemies can dish out, enabling its allies to fight freely. Generally, you’ll want to build items such as Heart of Tarrasque and Assault Cuirass, to name a few, that enable this hero to tank damage and play aggressively.
Strengths Of Primal Beast
- High damaging AOE spells that can burst enemies down
- Good base armor for tanky damage in the laning base
- AOE stun that can disrupt team fights
- Impressive strength scaling for the late game
- Great gap-closing ability to get on top of the enemy
Weaknesses Of Primal Beast
- Too reliant on abilities to do damage later in the game
- Most of his abilities are countered by dispels and spell immunity
- Low agility gain results in low armor growth
- Low intelligence gain can result in Primal Beast running out of mana frequently
Best Build For Playing Primal Beast As Offlane
Due to his inherent capability to tank damage, Primal Beast is primarily built to be an Offlaner or a tank that can hold its ground in the front line. Throughout the whole game, your main job is to participate in all fights and be the one that either initiates those fights or takes first contact to force the enemy to throw their spells at you.
Laning Phase (0 – 10 minutes)
During the laning phase, your primary goal is to secure as much gold and XP as possible while denying it from the enemy team. As an Offlaner, you should focus on harassing the enemy Safelaner/Carry as much as you can in order to cripple their farming speed and deny them their crucial item timings. Here are some items you should go for to aid you in dominating your lane:
| Starting Items | ||
| 1 x Tango | 2 x Iron Branches | 1 x Quelling Blade |
| 2 x Gauntlets of Strength |
As you trade blows with the enemy heroes in your lane, the Tangos and Branches will provide you with enough sustain to maintain your health(HP). You can choose to ship out more regeneration items such as Mangos, Clarity, or even a Salve to help you in the lane and keep your HP and mana up.
On the other hand, the multiple Gauntlets of Strength will complement your ability to tank hits and further equip you with more stats in order to buff you up. Plus, you should also go for a Quelling Blade as it is a great item that provides you additional damage, enabling you to last hit creeps more effectively and stack up denies against the enemy.
Early Game (10 – 20 minutes)
Once you pass the laning phase, all the heroes will start to move around the map looking to farm, fight or push down towers. At this point of the game, as an Offlaner, you should join your Midlaner and supports them whenever they want to go for an objective.
In the early game, you should build the following items to enable you to effectively fight with your team and take map control:
| Early Game Items | ||
| Phase Boots | Soul Ring | Magic Wand |
| Blink |
Getting Phase Boots is a great way to gain additional movement speed on Primal Beast, allowing you to sprint in and out of team fights and easily chase down enemies. Plus, activating Phase Boots during Primal Beast’s ability “Trample” can also boost its damage.
Moreover, since Primal Beast suffers from a low mana pool and mana regeneration, Soul Ring can be a great item to help deal with this problem while providing additional stats to buff up the hero’s ability to survive hits from enemies.
On the other hand, Blink Dagger is one of the must-have items on Primal Beast as it enables you to do your job of initiating fights more effectively. Not just that, it is great for jumping on an enemy and melting them with your insane AOE damage. Later in the game, you can upgrade it to an Overwhelming Blink and buff yourself with more HP and strength.
Primal Beast Best Items
After the 20-minute mark, you should be looking to build the following core items as soon as possible to win the game:
| Core Items | ||
| Black King Bar | Aghanim Shard | Kaya and Sange |
| Heart of Tarrasque | Aghanim Scepter |
Black King Bar(BKB) is generally regarded as a must-have on every core hero due to its active ability that gives you Magic Immunity, improving your survivability against enemy disables and magic spells. Therefore, you should always go for this item first after you get your Blink.
Aghanim Shard is an incredibly useful item on Primal Beast as it gives you an additional ability Rock Throw that stuns enemies in an AOE, making it a great disable for a team fight.
Moreover, Kaya and Sange is another cost-effective item you should pick up as it gives a considerable boost to your stats while also buffing up the damage of your spells. On the other hand, purchasing a Heart of Tarrasque will give you a massive amount of health and strength, making you very hard to kill.
Lastly, you can top off your build with an Aghanim Scepter as it greatly boosts the damage of your “Uproar” ability and gives you the ability to apply a “Break” on your enemies, disabling their passive abilities. This is incredibly useful against heroes like Phantom Assasin and Bristleback whose passive ability naturally makes them harder to kill.
Situational Items
Here are some items you can consider picking up if the situation of the game demands it:
| Situational Items | ||
| Heaven’s Halberd | Crimson Guard | Pipe of Insight |
| Assault Cuirass | Ethereal Blade |
Heaven’s Halberd is a great alternative to Kaya and Sange as both of them provide great stats. However, Heaven’s Halberd’s active ability to disarm enemy heroes is a useful tool to have against heavy hitters such as Phantom Assasin or Templar Assasin and prevents them from doing damage for a limited time. Plus, it also adds to your survivability by providing evasion.
Crimson Guard and Pipe of Insight are two incredibly useful items you can get to support your team due to the aura they provide that blocks physical and magical damage respectively. You can pick up a Crimson Guard, especially when the enemy team has many heroes that deal physical damage. On the other hand, if the enemy team has a lot of magic damage, you can pick up a Pipe of Insight to block some of that damage.
Assault Cuirass is another team item that provides additional armor to your team, which is especially great against a team that has a lot of physical damage heroes. Plus, this item also provides you with additional attack speed, which is great for fights.
Since Primal Beast has many magic spells, Ethereal Blade can be a great pickup, especially in the late game to increase your nuking potential. Not just that, it can also be used defensively to escape or help your allies escape from being targeted by physical damage spells and disable the enemy carry from attacking.
