Introducing Winter Wyvern
It has been almost two weeks since the introduction of the hero to the Dota 2 roster and, as always, we would like to look at the hero in higher detail, discussing her position in the game.
Introduction
Wintern Wyvern is a ranged intelligence hero with a rather versatile skillset - she has two soft disables, one of which goes through 
Black King Bar, while the other deals a significant amount of damage on a low 7 second cooldown. She also has a situational, but extremely strong save for her teammates and, arguably, one of the strongest disabling ultimates in the game.
She is also quite tanky against magic burst, with a starting Strength of 24 and a 2.1 increase per level, which is compensated with a relatively low speed of 285 and low starting armor.
Opening Week
Like with many new heroes, there was a really high interest in the hero once she was released, which gradually fell to approximately 25th popularity position over the course of the last two weeks. Given that the hero is a support, which is not yet in Captains Mode, this is quite impressive, since there are no pro games to boost the popularity of the hero.
Her current Win Rate of ~46% is also quite good for a new addition to the roster - there is little to no experience on the hero throughout the majority of the community, who probably have not been playing Dota 1 for a while.
Both popularity and Win Rate can be attributed to the fact that 
Winter Wyvern is a good counter to currently popular carries, such as 
Juggernaut, 
Slark and 
Troll Warlord, which mostly deal physical damage through auto-attacks.
Skill Build
Currently, the most popular build on the hero is maxing your W - 
Splinter Blast, finishing Q - 
Arctic Burn second and leaving E - 
Cold Embrace for last. Ultimate is taken at levels 6, 11 and 16.
Personally, after roughly ten games on the hero, I believe the most popular skill build to be very situational and generally give higher priority to Arctic Burn. It does yield less burst damage, but in prolonged laning phase which is characteristic to your typical pub game, it is often the case, that you cannot use Splinter Blast, since there is no second target for the initial projectile to splinter from if you are chasing an offlaner.
This skill is also better in active ganking scenarios, with decently scaling slow (as opposed to static slow on Splinter Blast) and decreased cooldown/manacost.
Given low income on the support heroes and a very desirable early 
Force Staff, there is no mana to support spamming Splinter Blast. However, if your team composition allows for quick tower pushing and you are certain that there are going to be teamfights early on, maxing W could be a better option, especially if you do not rush Force Staff and opt for 
Arcane Boots instead, which can be built pretty early if your team manages to destroy a tower. It is also better to max W first in a trilane vs trilane scenarios, which are less common, but do occasionally occur.
Laning
Winter Wyvern is probably among the most annoying supports to deal with as an offlaner. Granted, she is not the best of harassers when it comes to right-clicks, but her skillset more than makes up for it. Trading HP against Winter Wyvern, if she is played correctly, is never going to be in favor of the offlaner, and having extra regeneration is a must, if you happen to play against her.
One very important factor which is constantly overlooked is that Arctic Burn gives flying movement, meaning that in certain situations you can catch an enemy off-guard with a slowing attack from behind. This skill is also incredibly useful when it comes to controlling runes (something a lot of players tend to disregard as supports). Since on both Dire and Radiant you can fly over a cliff, instead of going all the way around and getting stuck in the process due to "path-finding fixes", you are almost always guaranteed to outrun the offlaner.
While the hero has no hard disables and ganiking an enemy mid-laner with some sort of mobility will require extra help, she is absolutely devastating against heroes that usually rely on their tankiness and positioning to avoid ganks. Since LvL 3 Arctic Burn already has a 900 units range, you can slow the target by an impressive 35% right after being revealed from 
Smoke of Deceit and in many cases follow it up with Splinter Blast.
Teamfights
Teamfights is where this hero truly shines. While all of her spells bring a decent amount of utility, it is the ultimate, which, in my opinion, is completely broken. Granted, it does have a slightly smaller radius than both 
Reverse Polarity and 
Black Hole, but it gives the benefits of both worlds, with no channeling requirement and an AOE, which will disable targets after the initial cast, if they happen to enter its radius.
It is also one of the undispellable debuffs, hence it cannot be purged with 
Aphotic Shield, 
Press The Attack or even 
Dark Pact. Lastly, it scales incredibly well. Not only is it a disable, which already tend to do more in the later stages of the game, but it also effectively turns enemy DPS against him. Though it should not be used as an excuse to avoid using it on a single target - in many cases the created "void zone" around the enemy hero will discourage his teammates from re-initiating and you can secure a clean kill on an enemy priority target.
Even if the enemy re-initiates, it will either have to be really awkward, with weird positioning, to avoid getting caught in the AoE, or it will be completely failed, with them entering the taunt radius and getting disabled themselves.
Another argument towards using the skill liberally is its relatively low cooldown of 90/80/70 seconds.
Closing Comments
Personally, I am always excited when a new support hero is introduced to Dota 2. In my opinion both 
Oracle and Winter Wyvern are quite overpowered, but while the first suffers from inability of public MM players to understand his role (98th Popularity, 41% Win Rate, 
Dagon as one of the most popular items), the latter is making quite an impact on our everyday pubs.
That said, I believe the hero will get nerfed in the next patch, if he is ever to enter the Captains Mode. The hero does too much on a low cooldown, without taking a core position (compared to 
Magnus) or weakening the laning stage by jungling (compared to 
Enigma). Winter Wyvern is also situationally better than heroes like 
Bane, 
Batrider and 
Beastmaster as a Black King Bar penetrating single target disabler, due to the undispellable nature of her ultimate.
If you are up for some easy MMR, play her while she is untouched. Yours truly has won 9/10 games on the hero across several accounts in different MMR ranges (2500-4400).
Very interesting analysis. Was hoping for a mini patch analysis too.
Is playing WW in the offlane viable?
Whether playing certain hero in a certain lane is viable is always a hard question to answer. Theoretically - yes, you can play her in the offlane. However, this will mean you are sacrificing a position for a potentially better scaling hero, or a hero, which can secure more farm/xp in the offlane. If played safely and staying near the trees you can get away with most ganks, since you only destroy trees on landing, not while flying over them. But the hero is extremely strong come level 6 and does not scale particularly well past level 11 or 14, when she gets most of her burst/utility. A support is a more suited position, in my opinion.
Eggs has said that he encountered Winter Wyvern mid once, and it was really hard to lane against as Storm Spirit, since she could easily outharass him in lane with a combo, leaving roughly half HP. Then again, I really don't see items which would be desperately needed by the hero except for forcestaff. You can always go Hex/Euls/Shivas or even refresher on her, but with the same amount of Xp/Gold a lot of heroes are going to have a much higher impact, compared to an overfarmed and overleveled Wyvern.
Awesome, informative answer, thanks!
What do you think about boot choice on WW?
My friends and I, after few games with the hero in our draft, decided what we thought was definitively that mana boots were the way to go, because the tranq regen doesn't really help a hero with a good low cooldown heal like WW does.
However, I was watching Purge play the hero, and he said he thought tranqs were the only way to go on WW, because Wyvern really needs both armour and movement speed that tranqs provide for cheap.
This hero is a core. It is a situational core, but a core non-the-less.
It is almost a complete counter to illusion heros, it has roughly the same attack range as sniper when using his first spell and can jungle freely with only a soul ring (or a bottle if done correctly).
He can push out lanes with ease and rushing mjollnir almost nullifies the need for creeps since they fall like flies.
He is also so incredibly good at defending base.
He has an escape with his Q ability and is countered by so few characters that I believe he should be a core.
Either mid, Safelane or Mid.
The only downside to this hero is his need for levels which can be countered with a quick midas or just by laning solo.
If your team flames you for playing WW core, they are stupid.
I recommend Scythe, Mjollnir, Skadi, BoT, MKB and anything from a Refresher to a Daedalus, being farely versatile. (LATEGAME BUILD OFCOURSE)
Thanks for your time.
This hero is a support(Best played in position no.4) though, he can mid with ease because of his nuke.Btw that attack range only works for a few seconds, even if you build DPS items like Mjollnir, Skadi, BoT, MKB and Daedalus, you never going to outcarry hard carry like PA, FV, Troll ,etc. Your late build should consist of something like Refresher or utility items instead. He is one of the anti carry just like SD with his Cold Embrace and Winter Curse. He works wonder if lined up against most physical damage dealer, but wont do very well against nukers.
His worst counter : Slark,OD,Huskar(Right Clicker),Silencer and other burst nukers. and worst of the worst is Medusa
@0cat Great joke. <1k matches played at 51% winrate makes you think you can decide what's canon on heroes?
wut? WW a core? Maybe in low level pubs but there you can turn techies into a viable late game rightclicking hardcarry XD
Nice analysis, not much to add to it really.
The heroe excells against right-clickers, there is no doubt about this.
I've used her against a LC and she wasn't able to get any extra damage in the whole game due to the use of E.
Wyvern is never going to be a hard core right clicker. The way he nuliffies LC is why Wyvern is one of anti carries hero.
Hey man, nice overview. I wanna point out that lately omniknight winrate dropped significanly and his pick rate also raised significantly after new bloom. Can you point out the biggest changes to heroes winrates and picks due to new bloom?
@WHOPT
We believe that a lot of Win Rate/Pick Rate statistics is messed up due to Valve's API recording Year Beast games as Normal unranked. Therefore, any assumptions about the state of the game right now are going to be terribly inaccurate. I might do a blog post about New Bloom a week after the event ends.
I cringe whenever I hear people refer to WW as "he". Granted, I first encountered Dota around July of last year, so maybe older players keep doing that out of force of habit.
penisidck
If you buy Soul Ring, even as a support, her W becomes easily spammable.
yeah i agree on the ult, but i think primal roar is still better and yet no one seems to notice the poor beastmaster
The hero is indeed OP, in fact when I started playing her I won 6 games in a row, slowly getting better at her to the point I can almost always land splinter blast to hit the enemy (even in jungle you can take advantage of neutral creeps). though calling her for easy mmr is not correct, she shines in late game so a pushing strat is good against her, and you should never underestimate the idiocy of your teammates if you are in a low mmr, they can still be farming when the enemy is taking your tier 3.
While the hero has no hard disables and ganiking an enemy mid-laner
just noticed a typo
I think this hero is possibly the best protective lane-support out there. As mentioned her ganking strength is limited also the ability to jungle. But she's top tier at keeping her lane teammate alive and zone out the opposing heroes. Therefore if u put her with a carry that has a very slow start and has little kill potentials on lane, WW would be perfect. Me and my friend played a spec WW lane and she was able to secure a 18 min radianc for spec vs a lion veno jug aggressive trilane. And the best thing about WW is while she does this she still get lvls and offers huge impact in late gam clash. I haven't tried but I think a WW naga combo can work as well.
You mean WW and magnus combo?
Stop that BS about oracle already, this is getting old.
WW, my best hero so far :D
I think right now its the best hero ingame
))))))))))
There's nothing like playing SF against Wyvern. She freezes an ally to save them, then bam, you blink on top the the helpless frozen bastard and ult him for 3k damage.
Also Winter wyvern lacks damage output in late game, so even if you land an awesome ultimate and catch them all if there is no other source of AoE damage or a farmed carry behind you you only could kill one of your enemies.
Eh, I don't think WW is OP. Ulti is actually more situational than you think. Heroes like enigma can synergies their ultis with other initiators like tide. Any disables render the ulti useless. You could argue that a tide or someone could use their ulti after the duration ends, but Winter's Curse doesn't have a large radius and imo it isn't a reliable disable for the whole enemy team. Sure, in certain lineups having such an ulti would crush, but that's my point, it's very situational. Many heroes could do her more harm then good in a teamfight.