A Deeper Look Into Dota 2 Aura Items
(24 votes, average: 1.67 out of 5)
In Dota 2, players choose their heroes from a colorful and diverse roster of archetypes and battle in a team deathmatch to try and destroy the opposing force’s base. These heroes range in abilities, style of play, and strategies you can execute with their use. Part of the strategy is to choose correct items that will make up for your hero’s basic flaws.
Some of the items available during the Dota 2 match provide an Aura effect, which causes a certain buff or debuff to influence different units in some range. This might be greatly synergized with certain heroes abilities to gain leverage while clashing with the enemy fighters.
Let’s look closer at the most representative Dota 2 Aura items and see how they influence the game.
How do Aura items Dota 2 offers work?
Basically, an aura is a parameter change that takes effect on a specified type of unit in a specified area of effect from the source of the aura. An aura may stem from a unit’s ability, where it might be a constant passive modifier or be a temporary effect conditioned by a different ability or some requirements. It can also come from an item that a hero has in their equipment, and this is our main concern today.
Best Dota 2 items with Aura
It would be too long and boring to describe the detailed list of Dota 2 all Aura items, but here are the five of those that we consider to represent the range of possibilities and synergies in Dota 2.
Assault Cuirass – Assault Aura
A perfect additional armor to shift the scales of battle to your team’s favor. It is available in the Main Shop of each base, but besides the Buckler, it also needs Platemail and Hyperstone for the recipe, so a trip or two to the Secret Shop will be needed. Its aura grants the wearer and nearby allied units and buildings +5 to armor and +30 attack speed, and decreases enemy unit and building armor by 5. It’s very useful when trying to push enemy towers or fighting a group of minions.
Mekansm – Mekansm Aura
This is one of the most popular and most reliable Aura items in Dota 2. It provides a refreshing, activated heal and an additional aura that speeds up the regeneration of allied units. It is constructed from a Headdress and a Buckler, so you can assemble it through the Main Shop. It’s extremely useful in the early and mid-game to any support hero or a caster that needs to hold up a little longer amidst the battle. Plus, it’s also a gateway to constructing higher tier items, like…
Guardian Greaves – Guardian Aura
These are a little bit like Mekansm on speed – pun absolutely intended. You need to get the Arcane Boots from the Secret Shop and a recipe from the main shop to turn Mekansm into those. Additionally to its predecessor’s effects, it grants the wearer extra movement speed, attack and armor. The Guardian Aura provides a 2.5pts health regen and +3 armor to allied units within 1200 range. Additionally, when a fellow hero falls low on health, it boosts him with an intensive 16pts health regen. All this works great with tank heroes who can remain in the epicenter of the battle and benefit everyone involved, or with support heroes who need more survivability.
Vladimir’s Offering – Vladimir’s Aura
At the beginning of the midstage of the match, a slight boost to damage can make a huge difference. Stack it with life steal and it can really be a bugger to your opponents. Vladimir’s Offering, on one hand, requires three other items, namely Ring Of Basilius, Morbid Mask, and Blades Of Attack, on the other you can obtain it all from the Main Shop. On top of the already mentioned bonuses, it also grants a bonus to magic regen. It’s a perfect choice for melee heroes or crowd-controlling supporters.
Shiva’s Guard – Freezing Aura
This higher tier armor is created from a Platemail and Mystic Staff. It serves several purposes at once. Firstly, it grants a bonus to mana, armor and movement speed. Secondly, it has an active, rechargeable ice blast spell that slows down the damaged target. On top of all that, its Freezing Aura slows down enemy units and debiliates their health regen by 25%. Both it’s activated ability and its aura synergize greatly to help various heroes to move in and out of combat.
Which characters benefit most from Auras?
The basic assumption is that Dota 2 items aura range is more on the supportive side of the gameplay. If the abilities are increasing friendly units’ stats, they might become more useful while following a lane and leading the onslaught on enemy towers. The opposite is also true – the debuffing auras are good to fend off the critter attacks. While health regen auras might not seem as much, when stacked with heroes abilities or with other such auras can make your wave of critters much stronger, or even convolute with heroes’ skills on a more peculiar level.
One of such synergies is Dazzle using Guardian Greaves. Casting a Shallow Grave on the hero that is in the range of the Aura lets it recover greatly from a nuke or other near-death attack. Also, any health regen buffs are great for Io’s Tether ability, because it can help bring up a tethered hero’s health ultra-fast.
Why is using Auras important?
To be honest – anything that gives you an advantage over the enemy is important. Aura effects are often hard to acknowledge, even though there is always some visual indicator that a unit is under an influence from an aura. Still, they might not be so obvious at first glance, thus making them a less obvious leverage. Additionally, some of them stack perfectly with heroes’ abilities and allow you to perform more nuanced strategies.
Summary
We did our best to show a couple of Dota 2 Aura items, presenting how they influence the gameplay and what range of possibilities they provide for playable characters. Some are more about the sheer stats, like Mekansm Aura, but others have a more nuanced effect, like Freezing Aura. It takes some practice to see which of those are useful in what situations. Although these are passive effects, they influence how well you execute certain strategies. Hopefully, thanks to this article, these relations will be more understandable to you!
