Why Buying Black King Bar is Essential in Dota 2
If you’ve played Dota 2 for about 50 hours and engaged in public matchmaking, chances are you’ve experienced games that you thought you were supposed to win but ended up losing. This often happens when the enemy team has plenty of damage and control through spells and abilities.
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Typically, these games unfold in a certain way. Your team focuses on allowing your hard carry to farm and secure kills across the map, creating space and giving your other heroes a boost in net worth and experience. This gives you a significant advantage over your opponents. However, instead of grouping up to close out the game, you and your teammates start prioritizing individual scores rather than destroying the Ancient.
As a consequence, your opponents begin to catch up by staying grouped up and going for pickoffs with stuns and disables. In an attempt to turn the tide, you and your team make a final push, only to be repelled by the opponents’ high ground advantage and their ability to prevent key heroes on your lineup from using their own spells. This leads to the game slipping away and leaves you wondering what went wrong.
Often, the problem lies in your core heroes, particularly your hard carry, not purchasing a Black King Bar (BKB). Black King Bar provides magic immunity and could have allowed your carries to utilize the net worth advantage given to them by the supports. Instead, players tend to overlook the power of BKB and focus on building more expensive DPS items like Daedalus.
Without the protection of BKB, hard carries, midlaners, and offlaners can be easily focused down with powerful spells and disables. Slows and silences can also neutralize core heroes, especially those who rely on magic or melee attacks to deal damage. All of these factors can cause engagements to fall apart rapidly, even if you initiate them on your terms. Eliminating a carry during a teamfight often leads to victory for the team that accomplished it.
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Black King Bar (BKB) is the solution to most of these problems. Upon activation, BKB dispels negative effects such as slows and silences and protects the user from the game’s most powerful spells. However, it doesn’t protect against spells that can pierce through spell immunity. It’s especially valuable for core heroes, allowing them to ignore abilities that would otherwise hinder or damage them. Timely activation of BKB can heavily influence the outcome of games, and its importance should not be underestimated.
However, it’s crucial to realize that delaying the purchase of BKB is a risky move, particularly as the game progresses. Not buying it during the mid-game or after securing a few core items increases the chances of not having it in the late game. If there’s a reason to buy it, it’s best to purchase it as soon as possible to avoid being caught off guard by an enemy comeback. Including BKB in your core heroes’ item builds is generally a safer option, unless the opponents’ draft contains heroes that aren’t affected by BKB. In that case, other items like Manta Style or Linken’s Sphere may be more suitable.
Regardless, the impact of BKB on a game is undeniable. It helps teams close matches quickly and emphasizes the importance of the throne over individual kills.