Dota 2 Naga Siren is one of the most versatile heroes in Dota 2. She often gets picked for the carry role but can also be played in the middle lane or as a support. When you play this hero in a core role, the goal is to farm as much as you can, become tanky, and then use your illusions to keep all the lanes pushed.
If you manage to do this, you will gain a massive advantage as the minutes go by, assuming that you haven’t lost all map control. By the 30-minute mark, Naga is a beast and will often win games alone. If you want to learn the hero, this Dota 2 Naga guide will teach you the basics.
Naga Siren’s Pros and Cons
These are the pros and cons of playing Naga Siren in Dota 2.
Pros:
- She has excellent stats
- She can trap her opponents for a long time
- Her ultimate is one of the best initiation and escape tools in the game
- She farms incredibly fast and can farm the jungle with ease
- She can keep the lanes pushed and delay the game if necessary
- Her base movement speed is spectacular: 330
Cons:
- She’s weak in the early game
- She needs a lot of farm to be effective in a core role
- She often takes up most of the farm for herself, which leaves the other members of the team considerably weaker than their opponents
Lore
Slithice, the Naga Siren, belongs to the Slithereen Guard, and failure is not an option for members of this order. Naga was used to protect the Deep Ones and the wealth of the sunken cities. But after a successful theft attempt made by her enemies, she was cast out and banished to search for the stolen chalice.
Attributes and Stats
These are Naga Siren’s general stats:
| Win Rate | 51.9% |
| Level | 1 – 30 |
| Health | 578 (at level 1) |
| Health regeneration | 1.5 |
| Mana | 327 (at level 1) |
| Mana regeneration | 0 |
| DMG | 44 – 46 |
| Armor | 6.2 |
| DMG Block | none |
| Magic Resistance | 25% |
| Attack Range | 150 |
| Status Resistance | 0% |
| Attack Rate | 1.7 |
| Movement Speed | 330 |
| Attack Speed | 110 |
| Attack Animation | 0.5 + 0.5 |
| Projectile Speed | instant |
| Turn Rate | 0.5 |
| Collision Size | 24 |
| Vision Range | 1800 / 800 |
| Gib Type | – |
Ability Upgrades:
Naga Siren’s abilities are upgraded by 7 of her 8 talents.
- Level 10 talents: +30 Rip Tide damage / -2s Ensnare cooldown
- Level 15 talents: +15 strength / +13% Mirror Image damage
- Level 20 talents: + Mirror Image illusion / +500 Song of the Siren radius
- Level 25 talents: +7 Rip Tide armor reduction / -10s Mirror Image cooldown
All of these talents turn Naga Siren into a formidable hero, regardless of what position you choose to play her in. By the time you reach level 15, you are really hard to kill. And if you get to level 20 or 25, the enemy team will need to use everything it has to bring you down. Not only that, but they will also need to chain-stun you for 5-10 seconds.
Roles Naga Siren Can Take On
Naga Siren is a natural carry hero. The first goal is to maximize your Mirror Image and then become tanky enough to help your illusions survive until they disappear. In turn, this will greatly speed up your farming speed.
If you play support Naga Siren, don’t worry too much about farming items. Build yourself into a tank and then get ready to save your teammates from bad fights or initiate good fights for your team.
Naga Siren Item Builds
These are the most important items that you should consider buying when playing Naga Siren. The build varies based on what role you are playing. If you play support, focus on buying items to assist your team. If you play a core role, focus on buying damaged items to increase your farming speed.
Regardless of which role you choose to play, you will need at least one or two items that increase your durability. Your illusions heavily depend on how tanky you are and will not be able to do their job if they can’t survive a creep wave alone.
Early Game
For the early game, consider buying these items:
- Magic Wand
- Mangoes
- Wraith Band x 2
- Power Treads / Arcane Boots
- Quelling Blade
Mid Game
During the mid game, you will usually purchase several of these items:
- Manta Style
- Diffusal Blade
- Aghanim’s Shard
- Black King Bar
Late Game
In the late game, this hero thrives if you have one of these items:
- Butterfly
- Hearth of Tarrasque
- Eye of Skadi
- Bloodthorn
Always try to find the right balance between how tanky you are and how much heroes damage you do. There’s no point in being incredibly tanky against a Phantom Lancer. Your goal in such a matchup is to kill him before he gets out of control. But if you play against a Phantom Assassin, you might want to build a lot of strength and armor.
Abilities
Naga Siren has 4 abilities that can be further augmented by her talents. You can also gain a 5th ability if you purchase an Aghanim’s Scepter.
Mirror Image
This is Naga Siren’s best ability in the early game because it allows you to farm much faster. Each of the 3 illusions it creates deals 25% – 40% of your damage, which means that you can deal 120% more damage at level 7 and farm without taking direct damage from the jungle creeps.
The only problem is that your illusions take 350% more damage than you, meaning they will die very quickly unless you have a lot of armor and HP. By the time your effective HP against physical damage is around 4000, you will no longer feel this problem because your illusions will be tanky enough to survive anything except enemy heroes.
Mana cost: 70 – 115
Cooldown: 40s – 25s
Ensnare
This is the last ability that you will maximize when playing Naga Siren. You won’t need it unless you’re fighting enemy heroes. And initially, your goal will be to farm as much as possible while your teammates create space for you.
Ensnare traps a target for 2.75s – 5s and travels at 1500 units per second. The cast range is 500 – 575.
Mana cost: 70 – 100
Cooldown: 21s – 12s
Rip Tide
This is an excellent ability that greatly increases your farming speed. It also makes enemy heroes easier to kill. The amount of damage it deals is not spectacular: 40 – 55. However, each of your illusions deals that damage to the enemy. On top of that, Rip Tide also lowers armor by 2 – 8 for 4 seconds.
The ability is cast automatically every 6 attacks.
Song of the Siren
This is Naga Siren’s ultimate ability and it allows her to put every enemy asleep for 7 seconds in a huge radius: 1000 – 1400. Only spell-immune targets can still move. If you have an Aghanim’s Shard, it will also heal your allies for 5% of their maximum HP per second. This means that you can heal a third of your team’s HP for the entire duration.
This phenomenal ability should be used to initiate or counter initiate. Use it properly and you’ll never have to worry about being team-wiped because of bad positioning. As soon as the fight goes South, stop it and tell everyone to run or teleport away.
While taking or trying to steal Roshan, Song of the Siren is extremely useful. The enemy team will be aware of your power and will feel compelled to respect the fact that you have your ultimate available. Just ensure you don’t get baited into using it for no reason.
Mana cost: 150 – 200
Cooldown: 180s – 80s
Reel In
If you buy an Aghs, you will gain this ability, which is not useful but could still do a lot if you have teammates with AoE damage. It will pull all ensnared units toward you at a speed of 200. The effect lasts for 5 seconds and you can use the ability every 8 seconds.
Keep in mind, however, that this is a channelled spell. This basically means that it’s useless for a core Naga and should only be considered on a support Naga.
Ability Build Guide
When you play Naga Siren in Dota 2, you should try to follow this ability build order:
- Mirror Image: levels 1, 3, 5, 7
- Ensnare: levels 4, 12, 13, 14
- Rip Tide: levels 2, 6, 8, 11
- Song of the Siren: levels 9, 16, 18
If you find yourself fighting a lot more often than you had planned in the first 15-20 minutes of the game, consider putting a point in Song of the Siren earlier.
Combo
When playing Naga Siren, your combo consists of a good ultimate followed by Ensnare, Mirror Image, and Rip Tide. Your goal is to always trap the enemy and guarantee that the opposing team is poorly positioned while your own team is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the ensuing fight.
Game Plan
This is what good Naga Siren players do regarding tactics and strategy.
Early Game
In the early game, you aim to stay safe and farm the lanes and the jungle. If your illusions are weak, go with them and farm with all of them at once. But once they become strong, separate them and make sure that you take the farm from the lanes and the jungle at the same time.
If you have good teammates, they will prioritize your farm and keep you safe while you grow, so you can later win the game for them. However, do not neglect safety issues and try to keep Sentry Wards on you at all times to deward your own farming area.
As you can imagine, the enemy team will not just wait for you to become six-slotted by minute 30. They will constantly seek to disrupt your farming patterns and then take control of your jungle for 1 or even several minutes. This hero desperately needs to be able to farm the jungle, so make sure that you do not lose map control.
Mid Game
During the mid game, you will take part in most of the fights, and you will be expected to make good use of your ultimate. Without it, your team will frequently fail to win the battle. Keep in mind that if you lose a team fight with Naga, that’s bad.
Not only do you lose the fight. You also lose farming time and potentially a few towers. Fights should never be forced by your team because the goal is to reach the late game when Naga is stronger than most of the other positon 1 heroes in Dota 2.
Late Game
In the late game, Naga Siren can keep the lanes pushed and guarantee that her team will not lose too much, even if it loses a big fight. Furthermore, you can guarantee that bad fights don’t become disastrous because you can stop them quickly with your ultimate. But when you win a fight, you can kill everyone for the same reason.
Counters
Naga Siren is naturally countered by heroes that deal a lot of AoE damage or have spells with percentage-based damage. There’s not much use in being tanky and having illusions if the enemy side can quickly bring you down with everything you have simply by using a few spells.
The best Naga counters are Leshrac, Timbersaw, Sand King, and Necrophos.
Advantageous Matchups
Naga thrives against heroes that cannot deal with her tankiness and illusions. Templar Assassin, Chaos Knight, Nightstalker, and others are among them.
Most Used Skins
There are more than a dozen Dota 2 skins that you can use when playing Naga Siren. Three of the best ones are presented below:
Arms of the Captive Princess
This is one of Naga Siren’s most beautiful sets and its features will visually delight you when playing the hero.
Possession of the Partisan Guard
This is another beautiful skin, and it dresses Naga Siren in green and blue clothes. It’s also relatively cheap.
Prismatic Grace
If you want to play Naga while looking a bit more vulnerable than usual, this set is the perfect choice.
