A Guide to Dota 2 Most Overpowered Items

Dota 2 is full of great items. Like most MOBA games, Dota heavily relies on weapons to create the power differences between heroes. This is how the game rewards your prowess. A good way to get better in the game it’s to get Dota 2 most overpowered items, between skins and heroes.

Of course, when you purchase Dota 2 items, you need to make sure that you’re making wise decisions. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your gold, which means that your hard-earned advantage is illusory because you can’t use it effectively.

If you have 5000 more gold than anyone else on the server, you should be able to have a significant impact on the game. But if you don’t spend the gold wisely, you may be killed at the start of each fight, and your team will still lose the match.

Overpowered Items in Dota 2
Items in Dota 2

What Makes a Dota 2 Item Powerful

Dota 2 items are designed to enhance your hero’s natural attributes and abilities. To some degree, every Dota 2 hero is vital once it reaches a certain level. By the time you’re level 20, you’re typically fully able to utilize your abilities in ways that create huge problems for the enemy team.

If you’re also farmed and own several powerful items, you can do even more than with your bare hands.

Overpowered items in Dota 2 give you armor, magic resistance, movement speed, attack speed, attack damage, magic damage, the ability to blink, the ability to become invisible for short durations of time, the ability to become invulnerable for short durations, and so on.

The game was designed to allow players to find highly creative ways to get an edge and win. Typically, after a while, you start to use one of several items builds for each hero you play, but that doesn’t stop you from straying from the path.

There have been plenty of cases when professional Dota 2 players did things that seemed illogical to the audience. And they crushed their opponents with their unorthodox item choices. So don’t be afraid to be creative.

A Dota 2 item is robust to the degree it gives you an edge against the enemy team. If it increases your ability to stay alive, deal damage, keep your allies healthy, and so on, it is, powerful. It all depends on what your hero needs to achieve within your team’s strategy.

Item Builds

Overpowered Items in Dota 2

Some items are potent when combined with other things. Therefore, you should always ask yourself: what do I already own, and what should I buy next to increase the potential of my build further?

If you play Leshrac, don’t buy yourself a Bloodstone and a pair of BoTs. Make sure you also have an Eternal Shroud and a Blink Dagger. A Black King Bar should also be considered quite early to prevent the enemy team from locking you down and killing you at the start of the fight.

Each hero has a different set of optimal overpowered items in Dota 2. And those item builds can be further optimized based on the matchup. If you’re playing against a team with no stuns and heavy physical damage, there’s no point in investing more than 4000 gold in a BKB. You’ll be much better off purchasing some armor or a Ghost Scepter.

Heroes whose physical damage should be further enhanced with Dota 2 items that allow them to deal more physical damage. If their attack speed is low, buy some attack-speed items. If their movement speed limits them, try to invest a bit in better boots or a Wind Lace.

The question is always this: what will enable me, and what will allow me to avoid or disrupt what my opponents are trying to do?

Types of Dota 2 Items

Here’s a rough classification of the items that you can buy in Dota 2:

Tank Items

Overpowered Items in Dota 2

These are items that significantly increase your effective HP. When you play Dota 2, your health points are calculated not only based on your HP but also based on how much armor and magic resistance you have. For every 17 points of armor, your effective HP against physical damage doubles. In other words, you get another health bar.

Something similar happens in the case of magic resistance. That’s why tank heroes tend to buy at least one item that gives them better, more effective HP against magical damage. Against pure damage, there is no solution. But every other type of damage can be countered to some extent with well-chosen items.

Some of the best tank items are listed below:

  • Pipe of Insight
  • Guardian Greaves
  • Solar Crest
  • Octarine Core
  • Heart of Tarrasque
  • Eternal Shroud
  • Shiva’s Guard
  • Aeon Disk
  • Assault Cuirass
  • Blade Mail
  • Lotus Orb
  • Crimson Guard
  • Armlet of Mordiggian
  • Heaven’s Halberd
  • Ring of Aquila
  • Dragon Scale
  • Nether Shawl
  • Black King Bar

Damage Items

dota 2 items
dota two items

Damage items are suitable for Dota 2 heroes that need to farm using right-click damage and kill enemies using physical damage.

When you purchase damage items, you aim to farm faster and kill enemies with greater efficiency. Each attack that you get to land on an enemy hero requires time. At the start of the game, you may need just one second. In the late game, it takes less than half a second. But it’s unlikely that you’ll get to attack as much as you want.

This means that you need to be able to deal your damage quickly and get kills before your teammates start dying. When Dota 2 teams fight, they constantly try to bring down key enemy heroes before their team can react. If you kill a key hero at the start of the fight, you often end up winning that fight.

Damage items may give you damage, critical strike, attack speed, magical damage, life steal, and so on. Here are some of the best damage items in Dota 2:

  • Divine Rapier
  • Dagon
  • Witch Blade
  • Gleipnir
  • Butterfly
  • Dadelaus
  • Silver Edge
  • Desolator
  • Bloodthorn
  • Monkey King Bar
  • Radiance
  • Skull Basher
  • Battle Fury
  • Nullifier
  • Abyssal Blade
  • Diffusal Blade
  • Mjolnir
  • Maelstrom
  • Mage Slayer
  • Satanic
  • Sange and Yasha
  • Mind Breaker
  • Enchanted Quiver

Situational Items

Overpowered Items in Dota 2

Situational Dota 2 items should be bought under particular circumstances. If you’re dealing with a Tinker, you may need to buy Blink Dagger on a hero that doesn’t naturally buy this item. 

A Gem of True Sight may be necessary if you have a Riki playing against you. Against a Phantom Assassin, without a Monkey King Bar, you’re hopeless. In each scenario, the item is the perfect solution that counters the enemy’s natural advantage.

Situational overpowered items in Dota 2 are also bought when you need to eliminate your deficiencies and turn them into strengths. For example, purchasing a Hyperstone on a Tiny makes perfect sense if you need to deal physical damage. Because the hero is incredibly slow but sells a lot of damage per hit. And a bit of attack speed goes a long way.

Here are some of the best situational items in Dota 2:

  • Refresher Orb
  • Moon Shard
  • Hand of Midas
  • Aghanim’s Scepter
  • Linken’s Sphere
  • Aeon Disk
  • Heart of Tarrasque
  • Shiva’s Guard
  • Blade Mail
  • Eye of Skadi (slows enemies)
  • Rod of Atos

Mobility Items

Mobility items are suitable for situations when you need to be able to blink away from the enemy in a fraction of a second or initiate to catch him by surprise. Certain heroes cannot be played without a Blink Dagger. Examples include Axe, Legion Commander, and Earthshaker.

It’s not just initiators that need to be able to initiate. Most heroes can significantly benefit from the ability to blink in and out of a fight. When playing support heroes, you often need to start with a Force Staff instead of a Blink Dagger simply because you must be able to save your allies when they’re in trouble.

The Blink Dagger is good for you, but it won’t help against a Lifestealer trying to kill your midlaner. In the early game, you may not feel the need to buy such items. But the later the game goes, the more valuable mobility items become. For a melee hero, such things are essential in most cases.

In pub games, such overpowered items in Dota 2 can sometimes be overlooked, especially if you’re competing at a low MMR. But the higher you climb, the more you need to protect yourself and your allies against clever enemies that will search for the weak spot. If a hero dies at the start of a fight because he lacks magic immunity or mobility, the battle becomes hard to win. 

Here are some of the best mobility items in the game:

  • Blink Dagger
  • Force Staff
  • Boots of Travel
  • Power Treads
  • Mask of Madness
  • Phase Boots
  • Arcane Boots
  • Boots of Bearing
  • Drum of Endurance
  • Tranquil Boots
  • Eul’s Scepter of Divinity
  • Wind Walker
  • Sange and Yasha
  • Manta Style
  • Hurricane Pike
  • Arcane Blink
  • Overwhelming Blink
  • Swift Blink
  • Sange and Kaya
  • Kaya and Sange
  • Bullwhip
  • Spider Legs
  • Flicker

Support Items

items in dota 2

When playing a supporting role, you generally want to buy overpowered items in Dota 2 that will greatly impact your entire team. Being selfless when competing as a position 4 or 5 heroes is critical. Otherwise, you’ll become greedy and potentially ruin your team’s ability to win the match.

Support heroes tend to play a much more significant role in the early game when their cores are busy farming and quite fragile because they lack items and levels. A Naga Siren, a Drow Ranger, a Wraith King, and other heroes like them will need at least 10-20 minutes of farm to become effective.

During this time, the role of the support is to keep them alive and farming. They’re the farmers, but the truth is that you’re the honest farmer, taking care of these beasts that need and making sure they eat enough.

By the time you reach the mid-game, your role as support gets diminished, but you’re still crucial to your team. The spells you cast, and the items you use might change the course of a big fight and win you the game.

Playing Support in Dota 2

One thing to remember when playing support in Dota 2 is that your net worth will generally be low compared to your teammates. You are not a core hero, meaning you get the tiny farm in most games. So you’ll need to find creative ways to buy the items you need.

Here are some of the best support items that you should consider buying:

  • Boots of Speed
  • Ghost Scepter
  • Force Staff
  • Fluffy Hat
  • Gem of True Sight
  • Magic Stick / Magic Wand
  • Wind Lace
  • Null Talisman
  • Bracer
  • Soul Ring
  • Wraith Band
  • Arcane Boots
  • Medallion of Courage
  • Drum of Endurance
  • Glimmer Cape
  • Blink Dagger
  • Aghanim’s Scepter
  • Consumables: Clarity, Healing Salve, Enchanted Mango, Tango, Faerie Fire, Smoke of Deceit, Sentry Ward, Observer Ward, etc.

Dota 2 Item Skins

In Dota 2, some of your items, such as the Blink Dagger, can be customized by various skins. If you’re interested in utilizing such skins to give your items a more exciting aspect, you can find a lot of great options in Tradeit.gg’s Dota 2 store.

Posted by
William Westerlund

William is an author, editor, and an avid gamer with over 10.000 hours in CS:GO (Counter-Strike 2). He also enjoys playing Rust, Dota 2, and TF2 but never became a top 1% player in any of those games.